In a drive to increase Morocco’s value-added agricultural production, the first of 10 state-of-the art olive farms are expected to be planted in the region of Beni Hellal in September. The olive farms, each with 1,000 hectares of olive trees, will be concentrated in the Haouz, Tensift, Tadla and Meknes regions. With the first harvest expected in 2010, the majority of the oil produced will be for export, given the growing appetite for olive oil products in Europe.
Crédit Agricole du Maroc and the Société Générale Asset Management joined forces to launch the olive cultivation program. The investment fund, named Olea Capital, aims to revitalize Morocco’s centuries-old olive oil industry. The project aims to take Morocco’s olive oil production to 30,000 tons per year.
The Moroccan government is equally committed to boosting olive oil production. The National Olive Production Plan aims to dramatically increase the scale of the industry. At present, some 500,000 hectares of land are dedicated to olive cultivation, a figure the government seeks to double by 2010. The plan also focuses on raising the quality of olive oil, most of which does not comply with international standards.
Tariq Sijilmassi, president of Crédit Agricole Morocco, said he believes Olea Capital is an important step for agriculture in Morocco, a sector “in need of success stories” and in need of “a modern financial framework.”
Modernization of presses needed
The fund will inject money into rural areas and help to encourage balanced economic growth.
Sijilmassi said he is confident Moroccan olive oil is a strong product that will see good investment returns, due to its popularity in the European market. Olea Capital is the equivalent of a Plan Azur for the agricultural sector, said Sijilmassi (Plan Azur being the national tourism campaign to boost arrivals to 10 million per year by 2010 and to create 600,000 new jobs).
Morocco has a long-established tradition of olive oil production, but existing methods can be inefficient — and sometimes unhygienic. At present, most olive oil is produced in small artisan-style oil presses know as maâsras, many of which are still powered by horses. There are an estimated 16,000 of these in use in rural Morocco. The maâsras is not of a high enough quality to produce olive oil for export, with most of the oil being consumed by the producers or sold in local markets.
“Maâsras are also wasteful; after pressing by traditional methods, the pulp and pits still contain a lot of oil,” said Mustapha Ismail-Alaoui of the Institut Agricole et Vétérinaire Hassan II. It is estimated that up to 900,000 liters of oil are wasted every year. Storage and transportation are also major obstacles to the growth of the industry.
Learning from Tunisia
Harvested olives are often left in boxes or piled on the ground for weeks and allowed to ferment before they are processed. To stop the rot, farmers cover the olives with coarse salt, but since they are often not washed before pressing, salt finds its way into the oil. By international standards, a lot of the oil is not fit for human consumption due to its high acidity, said Ismail-Aloaui, although many Moroccans are used to the taste.
the fund will inject money into rural
areas and help
encourage balanced economic growth
According to Philippe Brosse, director-general of Société Générale Asset Management, the central aim of Olea Capital and the National Olive Production Plan is capacity building to meet a rising demand. These projects will promote efficient, modern methods that should enable Morocco to become an internationally competitive producer of olive oil.
However, Morocco needs to be careful not to emulate the semi-success of Tunisia on the olive oil market. Although a major producer in the Mediterranean region, much of Tunisia’s production is sold in bulk to Spanish and Italian firms, who then blend and brand it as their own. In doing this, much of the value-added is lost to the Tunisian economy. For Morocco’s plan to work, it needs to consider more than what happens before the oil leaves the farm gate.
