Currently, all markets and products are affected in one way or another by globalization. International presence has become a determining factor when it comes to assuring growth over the medium and long term.

Since its beginnings, the SOS Group has always shown a clear international vocation, as the industrial and commercial presence of the company in diverse parts of the world and, above all, the presence of its brands and products in approximately 100 countries, demonstrates.

The process of internationalisation made notable strides in 2006 with the incorporation of the Dutch rice company Lassie and the Italian olive-oil company Carpelli Firenze, plus the Friol brand. As a result in 2007 sales outside Spain surpassed domestic turnover for the first time in the Group’s history.

But it was in 2008, with the acquisition of Bertolli at the end of the year, that the company truly acquired an international dimension. The Bertolli brand has a unique position in the world, being the market leader in countries such as the United States, Germany and Italy. By incorporating these international sales and disposing of businesses that were fundamentally limited to the domestic market, Cuétara and Interván, the Group will now have a thoroughly international profile both for the nature of it main products, olive oil and rice, which it can sell throughout the world without having to adapt them to local tastes, and for the source of its sales revenue, which will be distributed more and more across the five continents. Bertolli will increase our US sales significantly and the US market is, at the present juncture, our prime target.

Between 200 and 2008 the revenue sourced outside of Spain rose by 1000 per cent. In the same period the distribution among the different markets diversified to such an extent that the Group has largely become independent of local conditions at any given point in time.