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Dcoop and its Moroccan part­ner, Devico, have pur­chased a 20 per­cent stake in the California-based table olive pro­ducer, Bell-Carter, Inc.

“With this agree­ment, Dcoop strength­ens its posi­tion in the U.S. table olive mar­ket, boost­ing the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of the pro­duc­tion of its 26 asso­ci­ated enti­ties that cur­rently stands at around 100,000 tons,” the coop­er­a­tive wrote in a press release on its web­site.

According to sources close to the coop­er­a­tive, if ​“every­thing works out as planned” Dcoop and Devico will increase their own­er­ship stake in Bell-Carter to 50 per­cent in the com­ing years.

Colleen Morris, the gen­eral man­ager of Bell-Carter, told Olive Oil Times that the California-based com­pany was not open to sell­ing an addi­tional stake to the Spanish coop­er­a­tive.

“Bell-Carter Foods has sold a 20 per­cent stake of the com­pany to Dcoop to secure the deal and has no plans to increase this equity posi­tion,” she said.

The acqui­si­tion is widely seen as an effort for Spain’s largest coop­er­a­tive of olive oil pro­duc­ers to avoid the tar­iffs imposed on Spanish table olives by President Donald Trump. According to Antonio Luque, Dcoop’s pres­i­dent, the coop­er­a­tive will ship the black olives to the United States and allow them to oxi­date there.

“We will ship our prod­uct from Spain, but the oxi­da­tion process for the pro­duc­tion of the black olives will take place [in the U.S.], so they will be exempt from the pay­ment of the tar­iffs,” Luque said.

Angelique Hardin, a spokes­woman for Bell-Carter, denied that this was the case stat­ing that the sale was an oppor­tu­nity for Bell-Carter to imme­di­ately increase their ripe olive vol­ume.

Bell-Carter was one of the two com­pa­nies that lodged an anti-dump­ing com­plaint to the U.S. International Trade Commission, which was one of the fac­tors that led to the Trump Administration’s 37.4 per­cent tar­iff on black olives.

In Spain, the effects of the tar­iffs have already been felt. According to the Spanish Association of Exporters and Industrialists of Table Olive (Asemesa), Spanish table olive exports to the U.S. had fallen by 40 per­cent in the first five months of 2018, com­pared with the same period last year.

“Our posi­tion, as part a of Asemesa, on tar­iffs is the same and we will con­tinue to fight for their elim­i­na­tion, but this is a busi­ness oper­a­tion,” Luque said.

“We have con­fi­dence in increas­ing sales of Bell-Carter in the com­ing years, that would also mean increas­ing our pro­duc­tion by 10,000 or 20,000 tons for export to the U.S.”

Dcoop cur­rently exports about 7,700 tons of black and green olives to the United States, both pack­aged and in bulk. Of this total, 4,400 tons are black olives and sub­ject to the 37.4 per­cent tar­iff. The coop­er­a­tive esti­mates that it will soon send more than 33,000 tons to the United States via Bell-Carter, mak­ing up half of Dcoop’s and Devica’s cur­rent table olive sales.

As part of the deal, Dcoop and Devica will exclu­sively sup­ply Bell-Carter with their olives. “[The plan] is to carry all the olives that can be brought from here to the United States, either in bulk or packed,” Luque said.

Acorsa USA, an American sub­sidiary of Dcoop, will also be ​“inte­grated” into Bell-Carter’s struc­ture.

According to Luque, the aim of the pur­chase is to fol­low the Pompeian model. Pompeian is the largest American importer of olive oil and is also half-owned by Dcoop and Devico.

• Dcoop


• El Economista