Last week the Spanish cooperative known as Dcoop reached an agreement with Cargill to purchase the company’s 50 percent share in Mercaoleo, an olive oil business established as a joint venture between the two entities in 2007, thus transferring full ownership to Dcoop.
Through the agreement Dcoop will now control Mercaoleo’s bottling plant in Antequera, Malaga, which currently has 25 employees. This facility has an annual bottling capacity of 100 million liters.
Meanwhile, Cargill will continue as exclusive distributor of Mercaoleo’s house brand in certain retail markets in Europe.
“Dcoop’s expertise in olive oil provides a better opportunity for the future of growth of this business and will enable us to continue to focus on offering a range of high-quality vegetable oils to our customers,” said Paul Naar, executive vice president of Cargill’s food ingredients business in Europe.
“Mercaoleo has met its trade and economic targets and the company is looking forward to grow its business,” said José Moreno, president of Dcoop.
“This joint venture has provided a strong foundation and we are now looking forward to developing our growth and continuing to offer high quality olive oil products to customers around the world,” Moreno added.
Though full details of the transaction have not been disclosed, it is worth mentioning that each company invested 9 million euros to establish Mercaoleo back in 2007.
Dcoop is the world’s largest olive oil and olive producer with over one hundred olive oil mills. Last year the cooperative produced of 293,000 mt of olive oil — around 10 percent of the world’s total output.
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