Directors Maca Garau and Victor Roig about Deoleo’s future strategy

Interviewed this month by a leading trade magazine, were both able to highlight the importance of maintaining a broad range of extra virgin olive oils to match every taste.

“The important thing is to have the capacity to offer quality EVOOs adapted to the organoleptic preferences of the consumer,” Maca Garau, Operational Marketing Director, and Victor Roig, Spain General Manager, tell Revista Almaceite for its 2021 yearbook.

Almaceite has been in the olive oil business for more than 20 years, conscientiously attending to its peaks and lows while earnestly attesting to olive oil’s superiority among cooking oils. The magazine has as its motto “The soul of the olive grove and EVOO”.

In joint responses to questions posed by the magazine, Garau and Roig acknowledge that extra virgin olive oil is the food category that has grown the most in recent years and insist that that trend will continue.

“We believe the trend towards growth in the use of olive oil as opposed to other types of oils is the clearest trend of all, and one that all the actors in the sector are promoting daily,” they say.

“Seeing how the efforts in communicating the healthy characteristics of olive oil are beginning to bear fruit encourages us not only to continue along this path, but in fact redouble our efforts. We want to guarantee the quality of the product and promote its use as a product that is undoubtedly healthy, which has helped make it a pillar of the Mediterranean diet for centuries.

“Deoleo, with its commitment to brand and sustainability in olive oil production, is among the companies keenly supporting this development.”

Revista Almaceite notes the company’s substantial portfolio of international brands but wonders whether it is able to maintain customer loyalty amid ongoing price fluctuations.

“The fact that we have top-selling brands in different countries allows us to minimise the fallout from shifts in demand that can result from continuous price changes – but we can’t eliminate it,” say Garau and Roig. “Our consumers are loyal to our brands thanks to the high quality associated with them, and this means they are willing to pay for the guarantee of getting a product with the same organoleptic and quality characteristics.

“We offer a wide range of products, which gives shoppers the freedom to choose the olive oil that best suits their taste and price preference. Raw materials in the food sector are often affected by factors as basic as the weather, which is why the costs of these materials are also affected depending on the harvesting seasons.”

The magazine comments that some large bottling companies are “more committed” to single-varietal extra virgin olive oils, but others prefer coupage – mixing the varieties.

“Our strategy is different for each of our brands,” says the Deoleo team. “We have market-leading single-varietal products, such as Arbequina, Picual and Hojiblanca EVOO from Carbonell. But we also have Pícaro and Bravío, from Maestros de Hojiblanca, which are coupage – they are blends made after a delicate and carefully studied combination of the best oils, the result of the labours of the main oil mills we work with.

“The important thing is to be able to offer quality EVOOs adapted to the organoleptic preferences of the consumer, and that these organoleptic properties are maintained over time, regardless of whether they are single-varietal or blends.”

They are asked about the growing market for organic EVOO and whether it’s an important “future category for Deoleo, both in Spain and for export”.

In fact, say Garau and Roig, Deoleo “has been committed to meeting this strong consumer demand for many years”.

“The world of ecological and organic products is growing in all categories and in all countries around the world. This is taking place, however, at different speeds. We have organic products under the Carbonell and Maestros de Hojiblanca brands, both of which are very popular with our consumers.

“It’s a segment that is growing and will continue to grow at double-digit rates in Spain, but its starting point is low, unlike other places, such as most of the countries of northern Europe, where such products are experiencing more sustained growth, but with a more significant part of the market already dominated.”