This 185-Year-Old Spanish Olive Oil Co. Keeps Innovating to Meet the Moment

Summary

Sucesores de Hermanos López, a fam­ily with nearly 200 years in the olive oil busi­ness, won three Gold Awards at the 2025 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition. The com­pany, based in Andalusia, attrib­utes its suc­cess to pro­duc­ing high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil and con­trol­ling the entire pro­duc­tion process, despite fac­ing chal­lenges such as labor short­ages and fluc­tu­at­ing mar­ket prices.

After nearly 200 years in the olive oil busi­ness, the fam­ily behind Sucesores de Hermanos López has become mas­ters of pro­duc­ing award-win­ning extra vir­gin olive oil.

The Andalusian pro­ducer earned three Gold Awards at the 2025 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition for a trio of organic mono­va­ri­etals: Morellana Picual, Morellana Picuda, and Morellana Hojiblanca.

“This is reward­ing; it’s a recog­ni­tion of a job well done,” said Antonio López Figueres and Andrea López Vericat, man­ag­ing direc­tors and share­hold­ers of Sucesores de Hermanos López.

“For our com­pany, pro­duc­ing high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil is the most impor­tant thing, and win­ning such awards con­firms the level of qual­ity we achieve year after year,” they added.

Since 2015, Sucesores de Hermanos López has won 24 World Olive Oil Competition awards.

Nestled in the Luque munic­i­pal­ity of Córdoba province, at the foot of the Sierras Subbéticas Natural Park, the farm was estab­lished in the mid-19^th cen­tury.

“The his­tory of Sucesores de Hermanos López goes back to 1840,” López Figueres and López Vericat said. ​“Generation after gen­er­a­tion, the López fam­ily built an agri­cul­tural legacy that cul­mi­nated in 1919 with the estab­lish­ment of an olive oil mill.”

That mill was equipped with the most advanced tech­nol­ogy of its time, includ­ing hydraulic presses and con­i­cal stones.

In sev­eral Mediterranean olive-grow­ing regions, con­i­cal stones replaced tra­di­tional wheel-shaped grinders, as they offered a larger grind­ing sur­face and higher pro­duc­tiv­ity.

“The con­sol­i­da­tion of the estate was car­ried out by broth­ers Antonio and Vicente López Jiménez, the fourth gen­er­a­tion, who expanded the busi­ness until the found­ing of Sucesores de Hermanos López S.A. in 1978,” López Figueres said.

“At that time, the com­pany already had 600 hectares of tra­di­tional olive groves,” he added. ​“They were mostly rain-fed — an area that has barely changed since the 1950s and still pro­vides the fruit for our extra vir­gin olive oils.”

The com­pany has always remained under fam­ily man­age­ment. In the 1990s, the old mill was replaced by a two-phase con­tin­u­ous sys­tem.

“That’s when the com­pany made a firm com­mit­ment to com­mer­cial­iz­ing its prod­ucts,” López Figueres and López Vericat said.

Today, the com­pany attrib­utes the high qual­ity of its pro­duc­tion to its abil­ity to con­trol the entire process.

Over 600 hectares, the Córdoba-based pro­ducer man­ages about 120,000 olive trees.

“The fam­ily estate is under­go­ing con­stant ren­o­va­tion to adapt to mod­ern har­vest­ing mod­els and, nec­es­sar­ily, to reduce costs,” López Figueres and López Vericat said.

“Since the ter­rain is a lim­it­ing fac­tor, with an aver­age slope of 25 per­cent, this process is ongo­ing,” they added. ​“Today, our groves are roughly split 50 – 50 between tra­di­tional and inten­sive sys­tems.”

However, the tra­di­tional groves are more chal­leng­ing to main­tain, espe­cially since they require inten­sive man­ual labor.

“The 2024/25 sea­son has been com­pli­cated in this regard. It’s hard to find peo­ple will­ing to work in agri­cul­ture, a wide­spread issue and a major chal­lenge for us,” López Figueres said.

“It’s also increas­ingly dif­fi­cult to find spe­cial­ized work­ers for key tasks like prun­ing, which is essen­tial to tree care,” he added.

According to the com­pany, pro­duc­tion costs in tra­di­tional olive farm­ing are sig­nif­i­cantly higher than in super-inten­sive sys­tems, because many tasks can­not be mech­a­nized.

“That means costs can even dou­ble or triple com­pared to super-inten­sive groves,” López Figueres and López Vericat said.

Additionally, a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the estate’s olive oil pro­duc­tion is organic.

“We began organic pro­duc­tion 15 years ago to meet the demands and expec­ta­tions of our cus­tomers,” López Figueres and López Vericat said. ​“That said, our farm­ing prac­tices have always been envi­ron­men­tally respect­ful.”

“The biggest chal­lenges of organic farm­ing com­pared to con­ven­tional include higher pro­duc­tion costs due to addi­tional tasks such as man­ual weed­ing, as well as lower yields per hectare,” they added.

According to the man­ag­ing direc­tors, mar­ket dynam­ics and higher prices for organic olive oil do not fully com­pen­sate for the increased costs.

“Additionally, there is fraud in the mar­ket, where non-trace­able extra vir­gin olive oils might be passed off as organic,” López Figueres and López Vericat said. ​“This increas­ingly affects the price gap between organic and con­ven­tional oils.”

In this con­text, the past two har­vests were dis­ap­point­ing for the com­pany, as they were for most pro­duc­ers in Spain.

“We felt the impact,” López Figueres and López Vericat said. ​“Being a small fam­ily busi­ness, this has pre­vented us from mak­ing major invest­ments.” 

“However, we make small improve­ments and invest­ments every year that allow us to keep pro­gress­ing both in the fields and at the mill,” they added.

The chal­leng­ing con­di­tions of the last two sea­sons have affected olive oil prices on the mar­ket and influ­enced pro­duc­tion strate­gies for many com­pa­nies.

“The past two sea­sons, espe­cially 2023/24, saw extremely high prices at ori­gin, lev­els never seen before, due to his­tor­i­cally low yields. This influ­enced our deci­sions and we’ve had to adapt,” López Figueres and López Vericat said.

“In the cur­rent sea­son, with an aver­age yield and the poten­tial for a good 2025/26 har­vest, prices are drop­ping sig­nif­i­cantly,” they added.

“Still, it’s impor­tant that prices don’t fall back to pre­vi­ous lev­els. We need to give value to our extra vir­gin olive oil, and that starts with fair, rea­son­able prices at ori­gin,” López Figueres and López Vericat warned, echo­ing recent con­cerns raised by sev­eral regional pro­duc­ers’ orga­ni­za­tions.

So far, the 2024/25 sea­son has been mete­o­ro­log­i­cally favor­able for Sucesores de Hermanos López.

“We’ve had abun­dant rain­fall, which was much needed after years of drought,” López Figueres and López Vericat said. ​“We’re now wait­ing for a good spring in terms of tem­per­a­tures to allow for good flow­er­ing. If so, the 2025/26 sea­son is expected to be a good one.” 

The com­pany sells its olive oils in var­i­ous for­mats, includ­ing bot­tles and bag-in-box. Consumer atti­tudes on what for­mat to choose are still evolv­ing.

“It depends on how they plan to use it. In gen­eral, all for­mats are well-received. The bag-in-box is the newest and has the least demand,” López Figueres and López Vericat said.

Bag-in-box pro­tects olive oil from oxy­gen con­t­a­m­i­na­tion dur­ing use and shields it from light expo­sure.

“We try to explain the ben­e­fits. It’s a for­mat that, in the medium to long term, will replace PET. International con­sumers receive it bet­ter than domes­tic ones,” López Figueres and López Vericat said.

In their opin­ion, rais­ing con­sumer aware­ness remains a very chal­leng­ing task.

“Often, eco­nomic fac­tors take prece­dence for con­sumers. It’s hard and slow work to edu­cate them about the ben­e­fits of extra vir­gin olive oil,” López Figueres and López Vericat said.

According to the pro­duc­ers, more should be done to improve mar­ket con­trol and con­sumer con­fi­dence.

“Tighter mar­ket con­trols by the author­i­ties would help ensure that what’s being sold as extra vir­gin olive oil truly meets the stan­dard,” López Figueres and López Vericat said.

“Low con­sumer aware­ness, com­bined with reports of wide­spread fraud in extra vir­gin olive oil mar­ket­ing, makes it hard for peo­ple to under­stand and appre­ci­ate the true value of these olive oils,” they added.

One way to increase aware­ness is through oleo­tourism, a strat­egy the com­pany has long embraced.

“We offer tourist apart­ments right in the Subbética Natural Park, and we encour­age peo­ple to visit,” López Figueres and López Vericat said. ​“Olive oil tourism is a great way to help peo­ple under­stand how won­der­ful extra vir­gin olive oil is made.”

“In this sec­tor, there are chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties,” they con­cluded. ​“What mat­ters most is to keep mov­ing for­ward and adapt to change.”