6th World Olive Oil Exhibition Returns to Madrid

Spain's World Olive Oil Exhibition is entering its sixth year with a renewed focus on new markets and climate change.

By Mary Hernandez
Feb. 21, 2017 07:54 UTC
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The sixth edi­tion of the World Olive Oil Exhibition (WOOE) will take place March 29 – 30 at Madrid’s Trade Fair Institution (IFEMA) in Spain.

This year’s event will fea­ture new back­ing from the newly estab­lished finan­cial insti­tu­tion of Globalcaja — a merger between three major rural banks in the area — as and an increased focus on inter­na­tional mar­kets and cli­mate change.

The main orga­nizer of the exhi­bi­tion is the span­ish com­pany Pomona Keepers, S.L.U. with the back­ing of the recently cre­ated bank Globalcaja and other part­ners linked by a com­mon inter­est in mar­ket­ing oil across the globe. The World Olive Oil Exhibition was born to pur­sue their goal of main­tain­ing the world’s area under oils as means of sup­port­ing a sub­stan­tial rural pop­u­la­tion and envi­ron­ment pro­tec­tion.

The World Olive Oil Exhibition aims to open new mar­kets to the prod­uct and bring together pro­duc­ers and buy­ers in one place, mak­ing it an event attended by investors, mem­bers of the media, traders and buy­ers as well as insur­ance, trans­port and logis­tic pro­fes­sion­als. It pro­vides oppor­tu­ni­ties for both estab­lished and up-and-com­ing brands to com­mune with other indus­try play­ers. Last year saw over 120 oil mills, olive oil coop­er­a­tives and com­pa­nies rep­re­sented. Organizers said more than 3,000 peo­ple from at least 50 coun­tries are esti­mated to attend this year.

Visitors and par­tic­i­pants can look for­ward to cook­ing and tast­ing demon­stra­tions in addi­tion to the con­fer­ence pro­gram put in place. There will also be ded­i­cated areas for meet­ings and exhi­bi­tions.

Cristina Villar Miranda, the World Olive Oil Exhibition com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ager, told Olive Oil Times WOOE hopes to be the world’s most acclaimed mono­graphic event devoted exclu­sively to olive oil across all aspects.”

Miranda said the event is updated every year with changes linked to increas­ing inter­na­tion­al­iza­tion, tak­ing into account the fact that Spain gath­ers approx­i­mately half of the world’s olive crop and is a big part of com­mer­cial exchanges. There has been an increase in mass-pur­chas­ing from coun­tries such as the USA, France, Germany, Canada, China, Russia and Brazil, with grow­ing inter­est from emerg­ing mar­kets in coun­tries like Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and South Korea.

In line with this increas­ing empha­sis on serv­ing an inter­na­tional mar­ket, WOOE will fea­ture pre­sen­ta­tions from Abdellatif Ghedira, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the International Olive Council on the cur­rent fig­ures in the global olive oil indus­try.

There will also be an increased focus on the envi­ron­ment, with cli­mate change tak­ing cen­ter stage in pre­sen­ta­tions by CSIC (Spanish National Research Council) and by Antonio La Cal Herrera, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at the University of Jaén.



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