The adviser for Employment, Enterprise and Self-Employment of the Junta de Andalucía, Rocío Blanco, has considered this Thursday that it is "excellent news for Andalucía, but also for Spain" that the Andalusian cooperative group Dcoop and the similarly Andalusian oil group Acesur have emerged as winners in the bidding process to acquire Deoleo, in an operation valued at 520 million euros.
In an interview on Canal Sur, broadcast by Europa Press, Blanco, who has taken part this Thursday in the inauguration of the III Encuentro Empresarial Ciudad de Lucena (Córdoba), has highlighted that "it is excellent news for the agricultural sector and for Andalucía, because it also highlights the value of our cooperatives," stressing that "we are talking about cooperatives of a large size and that are among the five largest producers at a national level, as cooperatives."
Along these lines, the adviser has defended that the fact that "a cooperative that is in the rural setting, that it takes on the production of oil at the Andalusian level, at the national level and at the international level, well, it is good news, because it gives an idea of the strength and the capacity that our cooperativism, our companies, have precisely to carve out a place in such an important sector as the production of oil."
Blanco has emphasized that "this, in addition, is going to have a translation into jobs" and has pointed out that, from her responsibility at the head of the Consejería de Empleo, she is "extremely concerned that that employment remains in Andalucía." She has also noted that the purchase of Deoleo by Decoop and Acesur "is going to have a second effect," that of "having our complexes removed, the stereotypes that we have had for a long time" in relation to the production and marketing of oil from Andalucía to the outside.
According to Rocío Blanco's assessment, "we are starting to feel proud of what we do, of what we have and of the talent that Andalucía has, and this operation is good proof of that, that Andalucía is making its presence felt in this particular area, at a national and international level, and has known how to impose itself," through Dcoop and Acesur, "over other competitors who were also bidding to take over Deoleo."