President and CEO of the company DeoleoThe oil giant, which owns brands including Carbonell and Hojiblanca, is forecasting price increases for its own-label butter starting in January. Ignatius Silvia explained at the 38th consumer congress, organized by the employers’ association Aekok In Zaragoza, supermarket chains are likely to increase the price of their private labels from the new year.

“On the white label side, starting in January, we’ll see growth that probably won’t be seen in brands that we’ve already had to do this year,” he explained.

He believes this will cause the negative impact that manufacturer brands have had over private label oils to begin to reverse. As such, he said there is likely to be “some market share recovery” for non-distributor-owned brands. According to bottlers, white label olive oil accounts for 60 to 65% of the market, while extra virgin olive oil accounts for just under 60%.

The Deoleo manager recalled that there are many annual, semi-annual or temporary contracts with retail chains, “which have not yet revised the price.” “Now they’re going to try to do overtake and restore or at least increase what they failed to increase this year,” he noted. Raw materials are now much more expensive at source due to their unavailability.

In addition, Silva explained that “the price environment will not change until at least April or May.” He doesn’t expect prices to increase further than what is currently in place and expects “consumer prices to weaken starting in June” 2024.

By then it will be checked whether spring There has been enough rain to make farmers think there will be a good harvest for the next campaign, which starts next September. “If it rains in May, farmers are afraid that a certain amount of product will arrive and they will be left with product in the creameries and they will start reducing prices,” he said.

At the moment, as part of this campaign, he assured that the situation will not change much. The harvest is predicted to be 750 thousand tons. Although the Deoleo manager believes that the rains of recent weeks could raise the amount to 800 thousand tons.

Also President Federation of the Food and Beverage Industry (FIAB) has shown moderate optimism and believes that the situation will return to normal when the monsoon cycle returns. At the moment, “this is the worst situation in this category in history,” he concluded.

Silva said distribution networks “don’t make money” from selling oil because they use it as “bait” to attract customers to their establishments. Moreover, he also noted that “no switching to other types of oils“Despite the drop in sales volumes. Seed sales are growing by 2-3%, while olive sales are down almost 20%.

As for the fact that there are cheaper oils on the shelves outside Spain, Silva stressed that this is due to a number of factors, and noted that price increases outside Spain “will come later.” He attributes this mainly to the level of inventories in those markets where trade turnover is much lower than in our country.

“Deoleo is not for sale”

The company president also wanted to clarify that “Deoleo is not for sale.” “There is no such thing as a sales notebook,” he concluded. In this sense, he said that “the company is looking at the long term in the same way as it was two years ago.” In this sense, he recalled that the company is “in the hands of investment funds” that come and go.

The oil company on October 9 denied that it was in open negotiations with Emirati oil giant Iffco. In a message to National Stock Market Commission (CNMV) talked about the process of market research to find out its strategic alternatives.

“Notwithstanding the foregoing, the Deoleo Group has initiated a market research process to understand its strategic alternatives, including a potential sale, and is working with Lazard as its financial advisor,” the company said at the time.