Los Gallombares, in full expansion

The Granada cooperative Los Gallombares is expanding both commercially and in terms of the amount of crops planted.
Along with the incorporation of new destinations for its produce, the organisation has just opened up a state-of-the-art facility, which is its fifth operations centre.
In addition, its members’ activity continues to rise and new hectares of crop are being added all the time. Work is so frenetic that the cooperative’s governing board has proposed that no new hectares should be planted in 2017. As of today, the cooperative already has over 2,000 hectares, with a production of around seven and a half million kilos. In 2017, the forecast indicates that 2,400 will be reached with the joint productions from Granada, Jaen and Malaga.
“A moment has come for reflecting and for being aware of where we are going regarding our business”, explained Francisco Delgado, the manager of the cooperative.
Furthermore, the new installations in Vegas del Genil are a geographical complement to the manufacturing centres in Ventorros de San José, Montefrío, Loja and Churriana de La Vega. This work space is made up of 3,000 m², two production lines and 600 metres of cold storage rooms and chilling tunnels, all of this fitted with the latest, cutting edge technology.
Amongst its five centres, in just eight hours of work, 130,000 kilos of produce may be processed. In this way, the Granada-based cooperative is the largest one in Europe for green asparagus.
The labour force for the asparagus sector is highly intensive both in the fields and in the warehouses; therefore it is an activity that takes on a very important role in terms of job creation. The cooperative can directly employee up to 600 people when the campaign is in full swing, with 2,500 employees working in the fields.
The produce from Los Gallombares reaches over 15 European countries, with Germany at the top of the list. On the American continent, Canada is showing some important growth prospects. The different markets have very different tastes regarding produce sizes, with Spain and Italy preferring the thinner varieties, along with some demand for this in Switzerland; medium calibre goes to Germany, France, Italy and England, and the thicker-sized produce goes to Sweden and the Scandinavian countries.
In addition to the local produce, the company also imports Mexican and Peruvian asparagus, which allows it to be on the supermarket shelves for longer. These imports can reach figures of one and a half million kilos. “At times the Mexican produce can cause disadvantages for our production, particularly if it arrives ahead of time because Mexico drops both the quality and the prices from the middle of March onwards and to a certain extent it sets the price on the international market”.