`Spain's AAO Makes 1,030 Inspections For Yearly Report - Olive Oil Times

Spain's AAO Makes 1,030 Inspections For Yearly Report

By Daniel Williams
Jul. 23, 2010 09:23 UTC

By Daniel Williams
Olive Oil Times Contributor | Reporting from Barcelona

The Olive Oil Agency (AAO), a spe­cial­ized min­istry within the Spanish gov­ern­ment, has made 1030 inspec­tions among the 1,748 active olive oil mills dur­ing the 2008 – 2009 cam­paign in order to ver­ify indus­try infor­ma­tion regard­ing olive oil pro­duc­tion, out­go­ing prod­ucts and stock. The AAO ini­ti­ated these inspec­tions to gar­ner up-to-date mar­ket infor­ma­tion and ver­ify data given by sec­tor enti­ties. The agency then cross-checked this data for accu­racy and processed and con­sol­i­dated the infor­ma­tion in the form of the AAO Yearly Management Report (2008 – 2009).

Spain Olive Oil Production (Source: AAO)

The AAO took sam­ples from olive oil mills in var­i­ous regions of Spain which were then ana­lyzed to come to con­clu­sions about their proper char­ac­ter­i­za­tion. 576 of these tests took place in the world’s lead­ing olive oil pro­duc­ing region of Andalucía, fol­lowed by tests made in the regions of Castilla-La Mancha (13), Cataluña (94) and Extremadura (70). The Olive Oil Agency, directed by Mr. Carlos Sánchez Laín also tested 860 olive oil bot­tlers and other indus­try oper­a­tives. The major­ity of these tests came from Andalucía (418), Castilla-La Mancha (118), Cataluña (101) and finally Extremadura (67). The AAO has also inspected 232 bot­tlers of table olives and 27 extrac­tors of olive pomace oil, as well as 19 olive oil refiner­ies, 21 oper­a­tors stor­ing olive oil for third-par­ties and 20 olive grow­ers.

Additionally, the AAO has cross-checked and ver­i­fied data cor­re­spond­ing to 1513 com­mer­cial doc­u­ments obtained dur­ing the inspec­tions of these olive oil mills as well as pub­lic infor­ma­tion given by other indus­tries involved in the olive oil
mak­ing process. These cross-checks seek to prove the authen­tic­ity of doc­u­ments
that detail the buy­ing and sell­ing of olive oil which make up var­i­ous yearly
reg­istries. The AAO also cross-checked indus­try doc­u­ments regard­ing the
deal­ing of raw and bot­tled olives.

Spanish Olive Oil Exports (Source:AAO)

As a result of these inspec­tions, the Olive Oil Agency has pro­posed a total of 9 sanc­tions for mis­in­for­ma­tion, assess­ing penal­ties to var­i­ous com­pa­nies total­ing some 40,267.67 Euros. Five of these sanc­tions cor­re­spond to oper­a­tors from the Valencian com­mu­nity and 4 to the region of Murcia.

The AAO’s 2008 – 2009 Management Report also cal­cu­lated mar­ket bal­ances and busi­ness per­for­mance dur­ing the sea­son in order to reach con­clu­sions about the Spanish olive oil value chain. The report stated that the final price of extra vir­gin olive oil paid by the Spanish con­sumer is 1.56 times that per­ceived by the farmer, a fig­ure that drops to 1.43 for reg­u­lar olive oil after includ­ing costs of extrac­tion, man­u­fac­tur­ing , bot­tling and dis­tri­b­u­tion.

Advertisement
Advertisement

Related Articles