The SOS Group currently markets seed oils and, especially, olive oil.

Olive Oil

The world olive oil market is one of the fastest moving segments of the world food industry, showing significant growth year after year and delivering products to meet consumers’ increasing concern worldwide for personal health and nutritional wellbeing.
Olive oil is a key component of the Mediterranean diet, the healthful properties of which make olive oil a food product with one of the brightest futures ahead of it.
Evidence of this was the ruling by the US Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) on 1 November 2004 that olive oil bottlers would henceforth be allowed to carry on their labels a so-called ‘nutritional claim’, i.e., the statement that unlike the alternatives, olive oil is high in mono-unsaturated fatty acids and that its use helps to combat cardiovascular disease.

The SOS Group is the world’s leading distributor of olive oil, with a market share of 22%. Its brands are the top sellers in all three major olive oil markets: Spain, Italy and the United States.

Spain

The SOS brands CARBONELL and KOIPE are the head-and-shoulders leaders of the domestic market.
CARBONELL leads not only the olive oil market; it is also the most widely sold product of the entire vegetable oil market. It also enjoys the status of being the most widely sold olive oil throughout the world.
The brand’s constant endeavour to combine market leadership and innovation centres on its unstinting concern for quality, evidenced not only in the range of products marketed under the CARBONELL label but also in its formats. For example, it was the first top Spanish brand to take the step of appearing in light-proof form, in tetra-pack.
Another recent initiative, dating back to the start of the 2004/2005 olive crop year, was to market the limited-edition, first-of-the-harvest oil CARBONELL PRIMERA CAMPAÑA, an extra virgin oil obtained from best pick of the early olives, fruit of Nature’s savvy and the years of experience, labour and love of SOS’s olive oil experts.

With respect to KOIPE, its clear leadership of the stronger olive oils, those with a taste factor ranging from 0.6º to 1.0º, with KOIPE SABOR, has made a decisive contribution to the circumstance that SOS is now the leading bottler in Spain.

Italy

The presence of the SOS Group in the Italian market is articulated by means of various brands, the best known of which are BERTOLLI, CARAPELLI and SASSO, leaders in the extra virgin olive oil and olive oil segments. The reputation of our brands has long transcended Italian frontiers, carrying the message of the benefits of the Mediterranean diet far and wide.

SASSO is a longstanding brand in Italy dating back to 1860. At present the range extends from olive oil up to extra virgin olive oil, having incorporated various new initiatives such as SASSO VIRGEN EXTRA SAPORITO, an oil with more body and taste, and SASSO VIRGEN EXTRA ORO, an extra virgin olive oil presented in a golden can in tribute to the time-honoured reputation of the brand.

As for the Tuscan brand CARAPELLI, which dates back to 1893, it is the leading Italian brand in the domestic market for extra virgin olive oil, having gained an unassailable reputation for quality and innovation throughout its long history.

BERTOLLI olive oil, strong second brand in Italy, is distributed in 40 different countries and is by far the olive oil number 1 in the world.

Taken together, the Italian brands of the SOS Group make it the leading Italian olive oil bottler.

Rest of the world

The incorporation of the Italian companies Bertolli, Carapelli Firenze and Minerva Oli within the SOS Group had the dual effect of providing the Group with a major presence in Italy itself plus arming it with brands having a significant presence in other markets, also. The list of these is a long one, starting with Germany and Austria but extending as far afield as Australia or New Zealand, not forgetting such significant markets as the Arabian Gulf or North America. Another important advantage was that these brands proved a perfect complement to the existing presence of the CARBONELL brand in markets such as Brazil and the Netherlands.

By this means, the brand portfolio of the SOS Group makes it the leading bottler in all the world's top olive oil markets.

Seed oil

The presence of the SOS Group in the market for seed oils dates back to the 1960s, when it introduced sunflower oil as a substitute for peanut oil, the price of which had been steadily increasing for several years. This new product, marketed under the brand KOIPESOL, met with such success that the company took the step of promoting cultivation of sunflowers in Spain. To this end in 1968 it set up an agricultural services company to undertake trials with a range of alternative seed cultures to encourage cultivation and to establish the logistic arrangements for efficient harvesting and warehousing.
By the mid 1970s sales had doubled and KOIPESOL became the number-one sunflower seed oil in Spain, a position it has maintained to this day. Since then the Group has extended its seed oil activities to other seed varieties.
In recent years it has developed and marketed heavy-duty cooking oils, designed for household use and for employment in the catering and foodstuff industries.
And a completely new departure is the establishment in Andújar (Jaén) of a multifunctional biodiesel plant designed to operate on feedstocks of either seed or raw oil, from flowering plants such as sunflower, soya, rape or palm. When up and running it will have a production capacity of 200,000 tonnes per annum.

In short, the presence of the SOS Group in seed oils fully meets the corporate goal of being present throughout the value chain, making it the first company in Spain to cover all the different value-adding processes and transitions from initial farming to final consumption.