Acesur Expands U.S. Footprint

Acesur, one of the world’s largest olive oil pro­duc­ers and bot­tlers, con­tin­ued its pres­ence in the United States by pur­chas­ing 356 hectares in California.

Carlos Yagüe Benjumea, the company’s head of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, told Olive Oil Times that the Spanish com­pany founded more than 150 years ago had planted 450,000 Arbosana, Arbequina, Lecciana and Sikitita trees that are expected to enter pro­duc­tion ahead of the 2027 har­vest.

The grove is located in Woodland, California, one of the state’s most sig­nif­i­cant olive-grow­ing regions just west of Sacramento.

“We hope to obtain about five mil­lion kilo­grams of olives, which in an aver­age yield of 20 per­cent would put us at one mil­lion liters,” Yagüe Benjumea said.

The com­pany plans to mill the olives with a local part­ner and sell the result­ing extra vir­gin olive oil in the United States.

“Acesur would be in a posi­tion to bring to the mar­ket an extra vir­gin olive oil of Californian ori­gin, which the local con­sumer highly appre­ci­ates since the coun­try is only capa­ble of pro­duc­ing five per­cent of the olive oil it con­sumes, being the main con­sumer out­side the European Union,” Yagüe Benjumea said.

He described the pur­chase and plant­ing as the first phase of a project to expand the company’s U.S. pres­ence.

Last year, Acesur opened its first bot­tling and dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ter in Suffolk, Virginia, roughly ten years after open­ing its first com­mer­cial office in New York City.

“In phase two, [we will] expand our olive grove and acquire our own mill and pack­ag­ing plant,” Yagüe Benjumea said.

He added that the deci­sion to expand its U.S. pres­ence comes after the com­pany reported strong growth for Acesur North America, which exceeded $100 mil­lion (€92 mil­lion) in rev­enue, along with a 15 per­cent increase in sales in North America.

According to chief exec­u­tive Gonzalo Guillen, expand­ing Acesur’s capac­ity to pro­duce olive oil in some of its most impor­tant mar­kets is part of its wider strate­gic plan.

“Acesur is immersed in a great strate­gic plan that seeks to grow in its ver­ti­cal inte­gra­tion… and the grow­ing inter­na­tion­al­iza­tion of its busi­nesses,” he told Olive Oil Times. ​“Therefore, we are invest­ing in expand­ing our pro­duc­tion capac­ity, adding more hectares of mod­ern olive groves owned or man­aged by our­selves.”