`DCOOP Reports Record Olive Oil Sales at Annual Meeting - Olive Oil Times
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DCOOP Reports Record Olive Oil Sales at Annual Meeting

By Máté Pálfi
Jul. 5, 2023 15:59 UTC

Late last month, DCOOP’s more than 400 coop­er­a­tive mem­bers gath­ered at the group’s head­quar­ters in Antequera, Málaga, for what was described as a ​“com­pli­cated” gen­eral assem­bly.

The gath­er­ing focused on review­ing the cooperative’s activ­i­ties, approv­ing finan­cial state­ments, review­ing the sus­tain­abil­ity plat­form and reflect­ing on the pre­vi­ous year.

The year 2022 could be defined as tur­bu­lent. However, at the DCOOP Group, we have grown in the face of adver­sity, and it has been syn­ony­mous with growth.- Rafael Sánchez de Puerta, gen­eral direc­tor, DCOOP

Despite fac­ing chal­lenges, includ­ing drought and ris­ing pro­duc­tion costs, DCOOP said it achieved a record total rev­enues of nearly €1.24 bil­lion.

This included a record-high rev­enue of €681 mil­lion for olive oil sales and an increased €119 mil­lion for table olive sales and €16 mil­lion for olive pomace.

See Also:Domestic Olive Oil Sales in Spain Remain Strong as Exports Fall

DCOOP also earned sub­stan­tial rev­enues of €151 mil­lion for its farm­ing sup­plies busi­ness, which pro­vides fuel, machin­ery, spare parts, fer­til­izer and phy­tosan­i­tary prod­ucts.

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Group photo at DCOOP general assembly

Away from its core table olive and olive oil busi­ness, DCOOP also reported increased rev­enue from its wine, tree nuts, dried fruit, live­stock and goat milk busi­nesses. The only sec­tor that lost money was cere­als.

“The year 2022 could be defined as tur­bu­lent,” Rafael Sánchez de Puerta, the cooperative’s gen­eral direc­tor, told Revista Almaceite ahead of the gen­eral assem­bly. ​“However, at the DCOOP Group, we have grown in the face of adver­sity, and it has been syn­ony­mous with growth.”

While Spain endured a his­tor­i­cally poor har­vest in the 2022/23 crop year, Sánchez de Puerta indi­cated that the cooperative’s record rev­enues reflected ris­ing prices and strong demand from the United States and Asia.

However, they do not nec­es­sar­ily trans­late into a more prof­itable year for farm­ers due to the rise in pro­duc­tion costs.

“The his­toric drop in pro­duc­tion this sea­son has been reflected, as it could not be oth­er­wise, in oil con­sump­tion: pro­duc­tion drops due to drought and high tem­per­a­tures, har­vest­ing costs rise and, there­fore, the price of oil rises,” he said. ​“With the great drop in pro­duc­tion, despite the high prices, olive grow­ers are going to earn less money in a con­text of clearly increas­ing costs.”

In addi­tion to its finan­cial per­for­mance, the assem­bly also focused on DCOOP’s new sus­tain­abil­ity ini­tia­tives.

The cooperative’s mem­bers were told that DCOOP’s olive oil and wine busi­nesses recently passed the inter­na­tional bench­mark Sedex Members Ethical Trade Audit, which tells retail­ers that pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies fol­low envi­ron­men­tal, sus­tain­abil­ity and gov­er­nance best prac­tices.

Members were also informed about the ongo­ing audit from SGS to deter­mine how close the coop­er­a­tive and its dif­fer­ent busi­nesses are to becom­ing car­bon neu­tral.

Before the assem­bly, Sánchez de Puerta also addressed the ongo­ing drought in Andalusia, which is expected to result in a poor har­vest again in the 2023/24 crop year.

“It is urgent to sit down and talk seri­ously about the issue of water because it clearly affects the sec­tor,” he said. ​“We have seen it in this cam­paign, and we will con­tinue to see it if we do not rem­edy it soon.”

“Given the lack of rain, we have to con­sider other alter­na­tives, such as irri­ga­tion, to be able to main­tain the olive groves,” Sánchez de Puerta added. ​“At DCOOP, we are com­mit­ted to bet­ter water man­age­ment, bet­ting on agro­nomic tech­niques that opti­mize the use of water and its reuse. In this way, we con­tribute to mit­i­gat­ing cli­mate change, stop­ping deser­ti­fi­ca­tion and guar­an­tee­ing the future of our peo­ples.”

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