Reinventing the business model in the olive oil sector

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“You can resist an army attack, but not an idea whose time has come”
Víctor Hugo

Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO) is a high quality product that must be defended based on its value in terms of Quality. The olive oil sector has great potential. It is a sector where there are great opportunities for growth and development. We remember that we are in a market share of approximately 3% of the total fat consumption in the world.

In order to be elaborating with increasing quality, it is necessary to continue improving the production systems, the exploitation systems and, above all, the marketing, sale and export olive oil. We must learn from the experiences that have been revealed as successful both in our sector and in neighboring sectors that have specific weight in the world of production and marketing.

The olive sector needs to continue in the scenario of change and development in order to reach more and more market share. The speed of change is increasingly evident, and added to this speed we must take into account the speed of implementation. The new real market trends put on the table the urgent need to adapt to the new environment and with it the transformation of business models in all sectors of the economy, and especially the agri-food industry.

The olive oil sector is making great efforts to adapt to the new models, it is becoming more and more professionalized with more weight, and it is getting closer and closer to technology. The currents that are transforming the world go through digitization, business 4.0 and globalization. We are not in an era of change but in a change of era in which change is not an option, it is an obligation.

What is common to all sectors of the economy is the reinvention of business models within the coordinates of innovation. The companies are 90% the same and the sector shares endemic ills of the economy that are shown in greater or lesser intensity, but they are present.

We have not yet seen anything of how the world is going to change, it will be like in the Industrial Revolution of the last century. "Today there are three trends towards which change is moving, automation, globalization and increased productivity of a reduced number of highly qualified professionals, which are causing an abundance of labor, an excess of humans"

The way of living, consuming, understanding work, understanding business and life are changing. We are experiencing a social transformation, a transformation that in 2020 was graphically reflected with the covid-19 pandemic, a pandemic that left no one unaware of this social transformation. Traditional jobs are being lost or sometimes transformed, and new jobs and new ways of understanding work are being born. Millennials are the consumers who are entering strongly into consumption and their way of living, buying and prioritizing values ​​radically changes the way of doing business that requires adaptation in values, in product and service to which they respond.

Without a doubt they are new realities that are transformed into new business opportunities.

New models of olive companies

Part of the characteristics that olive companies must have to adapt to the new models would be:

• Increase investment in the professionalization of workers. Increase training and put it in budgets and not in expenses.
• Assign budget items to strategy and innovation. Reviewing the current business model that the mill or cooperative has and adapting it to the current situation can sometimes lead to success.
• Having an agile and dynamic team that allows us to adapt quickly and support new technologies and new ways of understanding the olive grove, olive oil and its commercialization.

These three premises are undoubtedly important, and olive companies must have them implemented from the management to the workers, being a goal to be achieved for those who move away from their implementation.

The change has come to the olive sector, this no longer surprises anyone, and the business models are acquiring ever greater dimension and relevance, thus respecting the decisions made and having a path towards quality that will lead us to belong. to a sustainable company.

In this transformation that is taking place it is necessary to bet and make informed decisions. As Octavio Paz said:

The most dangerous human mases are those in whose veins the poison of fear has been injected... of fear of change.

 

This socio-political environment, and this sector, needs proactive nonconformists who are involved in changing the established models based exclusively on tradition, professional workers who enjoy their work and producers and cooperatives who become the engine of change towards quality.

Reinventing the business model in the olive oil sector is therefore a task that all of us who belong to the sector of one of the healthiest fats in the world and a raw material of the highest level such as virgin olive oil have.