`French Association AFIDOL Blames Bad Weather for €300k Loss - Olive Oil Times

French Association AFIDOL Blames Bad Weather for €300k Loss

By Alice Alech
Aug. 14, 2012 10:22 UTC

L’association Française Interprofessionelle de L’Olive, (AFIDOL) the inter­pro­fes­sional asso­ci­a­tion for olive oil in France, held a gen­eral assem­bly in Nice to out­line the activ­i­ties for the past year and to assess the results at the end of its three year man­date.

The pri­vate orga­ni­za­tion set up in 1999 works with French olive grow­ers, 230 pri­vate and pub­lic millers, com­mer­cial agents, table olive pro­duc­ers and olive tree nurs­eries to improve and develop the pro­duc­tion, pro­cess­ing and mar­ket­ing of French olive oil. AFIDOL orga­nizes var­i­ous sem­i­nars, con­fer­ences and short courses mostly funded by the millers and pro­duc­ers them­selves.

Producers of olive oil in France, both pro­fes­sion­als and non pro­fes­sion­als, must pay AFIDOL for the oils they process. Described as a tax in France, this Cotisation Volontaire Obligatoire (CVO) has been a sub­ject of much con­tro­versy over the years (CVO trans­lates lit­er­ally as con­tri­bu­tion, vol­un­tary oblig­a­tory), leav­ing many to pon­der how some­thing can be com­pul­sory and vol­un­tary at the same time.

Olive oil pro­duc­ers pay 14 cen­times per kilo­gram of oil which the mill owner col­lects while pro­duc­ers of table olives pay CVO based at 2 cen­times per kilo­gram for olives col­lected by the con­fiseur who pre­pares the table olives. The miller also pays AFIDOL for all the oils processed on site – 0.01 cen­time per kilo­gram of oil. Small pro­duc­ers can claim reim­burse­ments if they can prove the oils are for fam­ily use.

At the gen­eral meet­ing in June, Oliver Nasles,52, was re-elected as President of AFIDOL. Referring to the eco­nomic trends and activ­ity, Nasles said although the French appre­ci­ated the good qual­ity and taste, they found French extra vir­gin olive oil expen­sive.

Studies car­ried out over a period of 6 years showed a weak com­mer­cial effec­tive­ness of the orga­ni­za­tion. Nasles said it was impor­tant for pro­fes­sion­als to help con­sumers iden­tify French olive oils using the new stick­ers Huile d’Olive du Midi de la France which AFIDOL intro­duced recently.

At the assem­bly, Nasles said he wanted to increase the num­ber of del­e­gates of the General Assembly from 52 to 54 and Administration Council to 28. The pres­i­dent blamed the poor olive oil results for 2011 on bad weather in France adding that it resulted in a loss of over 300,000 euros for AFIDOL.

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