Acesur CEO Highlights Andalusia's Key Role in Sector's Future

Over 180 years, Acesur has grown from a small fam­ily busi­ness in Seville to one of the world’s largest olive oil pro­duc­ers and exporters.

According to research from the Pablo de Olavide University of Seville, the com­pany, founded by the Luca de Tena fam­ily in 1840, played a piv­otal role in expand­ing Spanish olive oil exports out­side of Europe.

In the wake of mass migra­tion from south­ern Europe to the Americas in the early and mid-20^th cen­tury, Acesur was one of the lead­ing Spanish com­pa­nies ship­ping its olive oil abroad to Andalusian expa­tri­ates and their newly estab­lished busi­nesses. Later, the com­pany pio­neered shift­ing from bulk to indi­vid­u­ally pack­aged and branded exports.

Over nearly two cen­turies, Acesur has remained firmly in the fam­ily. In more than 35 years at the com­pany, as export direc­tor and then as chief exec­u­tive, Gonzalo Guillén has presided over sig­nif­i­cant growth. He remains bull­ish about the com­pa­ny’s future, Andalusian olive oil pro­duc­tion, and a grow­ing global olive oil cul­ture.

While a career at Acesur was almost cer­tainly a given, Guillén joined unex­pect­edly while enter­ing uni­ver­sity. After fin­ish­ing high school, dur­ing which he stud­ied for one year in the United States, Acesur’s elderly inter­na­tional sales direc­tor died.

“When I returned to Madrid, my father told me that I would be start­ing uni­ver­sity, but I also had to work,” Guillén told Olive Oil Times.

Since he already spoke English, his father assigned him to the inter­na­tional sales depart­ment to increase the company’s exports.

“At the time, Acesur prac­ti­cally was not export­ing olive oil; just a few ship­ments to some Arab coun­tries and a lit­tle bit to the United States,” Guillén said.

To improve Acesur’s abil­ity to export, Guillén vis­ited many new and emerg­ing olive oil mar­kets in the early years to forge rela­tion­ships with poten­tial clients, learn about the cul­ture and con­duct con­sumer stud­ies.

“Little by lit­tle, we formed a dis­tinct strat­egy in each coun­try,” Guillén said. ​“And we grew slowly but steadily until now we’ve entered more than 100 coun­tries.”

Indeed, over the past 35 years, exports from Acesur and other Spanish com­pa­nies increased dra­mat­i­cally.

According to International Olive Council data, Spain exported just 65,800 tons out­side the European Union in the 1990/91 crop year com­pared with the 467,500 tons exported in 2021/22.

“Olive oil con­sump­tion has democ­ra­tized,” Guillén said. ​“There are so many more con­sumers all over the world now.”

Since 1990/91, olive oil con­sump­tion has risen dra­mat­i­cally from 1.67 mil­lion tons to 3.33 mil­lion tons in 2021/22. Over this period, sig­nif­i­cant increases have occurred in China, from vir­tu­ally no olive oil con­sump­tion to 42,500 tons in 2022/23.

Similarly, olive oil con­sump­tion has risen dra­mat­i­cally in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Japan, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

However, the most sig­nif­i­cant growth has been in the United States, with con­sump­tion grow­ing from 88,000 tons in 1990/91 to 412,000 tons in 2021/22.

Despite record high olive oil prices at ori­gin after a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive below-aver­age global har­vest in 2023/24, Guillén antic­i­pates demand in the United States to con­tinue to grow.

“It is pos­si­ble that the United States will become the largest olive oil con­sumer this year, some­thing we never would have thought,” Guillén said.

As a result, Acesur has invested heav­ily in the U.S., open­ing a com­mer­cial office in New York City more than a decade ago, fol­lowed by a bot­tling and dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ter in Virginia in 2020 and the pur­chase of more than 350 hectares in California to plant a super-high-den­sity grove late last year.

“The United States is the main olive oil con­sump­tion mar­ket where there is much more poten­tial to grow vol­ume,” Guillén said. ​“It is a mar­ket that allows for a lot of inno­va­tion. It is a mar­ket where the mar­gins are not so tight because there is a lot of com­pe­ti­tion from super­mar­ket chains in many states and areas.”

He added that despite less recog­ni­tion of the brand com­pared to emerg­ing mar­kets in Asia, the United States remains ​“a mar­ket that offers much more oppor­tu­nity than any other.”

Fundamentally, ris­ing con­sump­tion in the U.S. and the rest of the world results from a sig­nif­i­cant global pro­duc­tion increase, espe­cially in Spain.

“We’re cur­rently in a very bad sit­u­a­tion, with pro­duc­tion only expected to reach 700,000 tons again,” Guillén said. ​“However, Spain has the capac­ity to pro­duce two mil­lion tons of olive oil.”

Buoyed by Spain, ana­lysts expect global olive oil pro­duc­tion to reach four mil­lion tons annu­ally by 2050, and Guillén believes that con­sump­tion will keep pace.

“In the last 30 years, we have been lucky to pro­duce a prod­uct that con­tin­ues to be in style,” he said, cit­ing the grow­ing body of research demon­strat­ing olive oil’s health ben­e­fits and the con­tin­ual rank­ing of the Mediterranean diet as one of the world’s health­i­est and eas­i­est to fol­low.

“Virtually all the olive oil pro­duced each year is con­sumed that year,” Guillén added. ​“The rea­son global con­sump­tion isn’t higher is because of pro­duc­tion.”

In a nor­mal year, olive oil makes up roughly three per­cent of global edi­ble oil con­sump­tion (due to con­sec­u­tive poor har­vests, this fig­ure fell to one per­cent in 2023). Still, Guillén believes it could eas­ily reach six per­cent.

As a result, the best way to grow global demand for olive oil is to increase pro­duc­tion. While Jaime Lillo, the newly-minted exec­u­tive direc­tor of the International Olive Council, believes pro­duc­tion expan­sion will mainly occur out­side the Mediterranean basin, Guillén believes Andalusia will con­tinue to be ground zero for olive groves and oil pro­duc­tion expan­sion.

“I believe that there is not as much capac­ity to grow out­side the Mediterranean because the weather con­di­tions for olive trees are very lim­it­ing,” he said. ​“Spain is where there is more capac­ity to grow because there is a lot of land.”

Part of this expand­ing capac­ity comes down to what Guillén describes as the olive oil world’s indus­trial rev­o­lu­tion, which has unfolded over the past sev­eral decades. ​“The sec­tor has auto­mated and pro­fes­sion­al­ized a lot over the last 30 years,” he said.

This has been espe­cially the case in Andalusia, where much of the land­scape of Spain’s largest autonomous com­mu­nity is defined by super-high-den­sity olive plan­ta­tions. ​“They are the future,” Guillén adds.

He argues that cul­ti­vat­ing super-high-den­sity olive groves has low­ered pro­duc­tion costs for farm­ers by mech­a­niz­ing the olive har­vest. Over this period, olive mills have become more advanced, which has improved qual­ity.

“This indus­trial rev­o­lu­tion in the pro­duc­tion basics of har­vest­ing and milling has resulted in an impres­sive increase in qual­ity,” he said. ​“Automation means the olives are har­vested and trans­formed in a mat­ter of hours. Every year, more extra vir­gin olive oil and less olive oil of infe­rior qual­ity is pro­duced.”

While mod­ern grow­ing and pro­duc­tion meth­ods have taken root all over the olive oil world, Guillén argues that Spain is dri­ving the rev­o­lu­tion, par­tially due to its out­sized pro­ducer role, aided by sev­eral fac­tors.

“The first is geog­ra­phy,” he said. ​“There are vast plains with an ade­quate Mediterranean cli­mate for olive grow­ing. In Spain, some estates are between 200,000 and 500,000 hectares that can be mech­a­nized, reduc­ing costs sig­nif­i­cantly.”

Money saved dur­ing the grow­ing and har­vest­ing phase can be invested in mod­ern mills and state-of-the-art equip­ment.

By con­trast, Italy and Greece are more moun­tain­ous. As a result, the aver­age size of an olive grove is far smaller, which makes mech­a­niza­tion much more expen­sive, and there tends to be a larger num­ber of smaller mills.

“We are light years ahead of our com­peti­tors,” Guillén said. ​“In Spain, we have the best tech­nol­ogy, fac­to­ries, con­trol sys­tems and soft­ware, and dig­i­tal trace­abil­ity sys­tems, as well as the most advanced refiner­ies and the most mod­ern bot­tling plants with the high­est capac­ity world­wide.”

Along with steadily ris­ing global pro­duc­tion, greater aware­ness of the health ben­e­fits of extra vir­gin olive oil con­sump­tion has dra­mat­i­cally increased con­sump­tion.

“For almost all con­sumers in the world, olive oil is an aspi­ra­tional prod­uct,” Guillén said. ​“People under­stand it is a more expen­sive and health­ier prod­uct than other edi­ble oils.”

However, he added that extra vir­gin olive oil’s strong fla­vors have also been a lim­it­ing fac­tor in some areas of the world.

“Countries in very north­ern Europe or Asia have had a harder time get­ting used to it; they con­sume it at first more for health than fla­vor,” Guillén said. ​“But lit­tle by lit­tle, con­sumers are becom­ing con­vinced that the fla­vor is also good.”

Along with con­vinc­ing con­sumers to embrace its fruity, bit­ter and pun­gent fla­vors, Guillén sees prices at retail as a lim­it­ing fac­tor for expand­ing olive oil’s appeal, which he cites as another rea­son that pro­duc­tion must increase.

“Now, with 2.7 mil­lion tons of pro­duc­tion, we see prices of €6 to €9 per kilo­gram,” he said. ​“If we return to high pro­duc­tion, we will be at €2 or €3 per kilo­gram.”

However, prices will likely con­tinue to rise before they fall. Due to its sta­tus as the world’s largest pro­ducer by a wide mar­gin, Spain’s har­vest goes a long way in deter­min­ing global olive oil prices.

Once again, pro­duc­ers and experts antic­i­pate pro­duc­tion to reach about 700,000 tons after last year’s decade-low 664,000 tons.

Guillén said that prices will con­tinue to rise if it does not rain more this win­ter, and high tem­per­a­tures neg­a­tively impact the flow­er­ing period in April and May, as they have done in the pre­vi­ous two crop years.

However, if this were to pass, Guillén does not antic­i­pate prices going much higher than cur­rent lev­els since the fol­low­ing year’s sit­u­a­tion would be sim­i­lar to the cur­rent one regard­ing demand and a lack of olive oil stocks to carry over.

Going hand-in-hand with the prob­lem of prices, Guillén views cli­mate change as a defin­ing chal­lenge fac­ing Andalusian olive oil pro­duc­tion.

Rather than being fatal­is­tic about the olive trees’ prospects, he believes a coor­di­nated gov­ern­ment response would go a long way in alle­vi­at­ing some of these issues.

“The olive tree is very strong and resis­tant,” he said. ​“The only thing miss­ing in Spain is a much more coher­ent medium and long-term water pol­icy. The prob­lem here now is that all the poli­cies are short-term.”

Guillén believes there needs to be bet­ter coor­di­na­tion between the cen­tral and regional gov­ern­ments to invest in water infra­struc­ture, which he said has been neglected for the past 30 or 40 years. ​“The lack of water is absolutely a lim­it­ing fac­tor for pro­duc­tion,” he said.

Guillén points to the con­struc­tion of the Alqueva dam in the neigh­bor­ing Portuguese region of Alentejo, which has trans­formed the country’s olive oil pro­duc­tion capac­ity and made Portugal one of the world’s largest pro­duc­ers with the poten­tial to eclipse Tunisia and Italy to reach 300,000 tons of pro­duc­tion annu­ally.

Despite the chal­lenges faced by Acesur and the olive oil sec­tor, Guillén remains opti­mistic about the future.

“I am opti­mistic because the prod­uct is not only pro­duced in Spain, it is being pro­duced in more and more places,” he said. ​“Therefore, the global mar­ket is grow­ing, and that, in the end, is good for every­one.”