The company is continuing its firm addition strategy, reducing all non-essential materials for quality, sustainable farming
As explained by its chairman, Pedro Ruiz, “we owe everything to nature. For this reason, we are promoting ‘Less is More Farming’. Here, we bring together people, effort, quality, technology and sustainability, reducing all the unnecessary materials to cultivate with greater excellence and respect.” Less water. More yield. Less waste. More productivity. Less CO2. More future. It is the spirit that has made them grow and become a reference in the sector and the best Spanish Cooperative 2021 at the 6th Awards for Spanish Agrifood Cooperatives.
Its innovative, professional, empathetic and sustainable farming methods adapt with magnificent results to the global challenges, which categorically talk about sustainability, healthy consumption, and ready-to-eat food quality or consumer experience. And all these are only possible with some ambitious Sustainability, Digitalisation and CSR plans.
Cooperativa La Palma is the 4th tomato producer in Spain and the 27th largest Spanish fruit and vegetable growing company, thanks to the efforts made by the over 700 farmers, 1,200 workers and 4,000 families linked to it.
Since its creation, almost 50 years ago, the Andalusian cooperative has always sought out excellence. Driven by the ‘Less is more’ spirit and its concern to innovate, continue exploring and meeting the new consumer demands: foods with fewer additives, greater awareness and responsibility for a more sustainable and healthier lifestyle. Accordingly, they guarantee a magnificent selection of top-quality vegetables with which they are leaders in the Mini-Vegetable range with a wide variety of speciality tomatoes, snack cucumbers and mini-peppers. Additionally, they have a line of Subtropical fruit, (custard apples, avocados, mangos and pitayas), in which they are making an important investment, particularly over the past three years, assigning an important investment in R&D, professionals and resources within their operating programme to improve them. Specifically, their work involves levelling and adapting land, seedlings and integral automatic irrigation systems for water resource optimisation. A technical team exclusively devoted to developing subtropical fruit is concentrating its efforts on increasing production in amount and variety in a sustainable way, maintaining their high-quality standards. This commitment has led the cooperative to extend its offer and launch the pitahaya, an exotic fruit with a low-calorie content and beneficial properties for health, which has been very well received.
Every year, the cooperative anticipates the new market behaviours, launching high-quality brands with personality such as Amela®, a tomato that has revolutionised the market, or Adora®, an excellent brown grooved tomato that has received prominent awards from the sector and is the leader of its category.
Cherrymole is its commitment in the ready-cooked range. This is made up of an innovative Gazpacho and Salmorejo using mini-vegetables and a delicious Vegetable Cream based on Adora® tomatoes. 100% natural, additive-free, they maintain their organoleptic properties intact. This specialisation allows top-quality fruit and vegetables to be eaten all year round, overcoming the seasonality of the campaigns, in different formats, 100% recyclable and sustainable.
The market demands a sustainable, quality vegan alternative. And Cooperativa La Palma has already started to meet this demand with its own high-quality product in original flavour and format proposals.
