Aceites del Sur, one of the main Spanish groups in the olive oil sector, has started operating in Syria in May 2003. The Spanish company already exports to more than 65 countries in the world, especially to the Americas and to Russia. For several years it has been managing a regional office in Aleph (north of Syria), and it has decided to cross the threshold of delocalisation to be active in the whole region.

The new company, called Middle East Olive Oil Company (MEO), is a joint-venture with the Bin Ladin Saudi conglomerate. Its plant is installed in the city of Idlib, in the north-west of the country, in the olive groves region, on a site that covers more than 50,000m². Each day, it can extract 120,000 litres, produce 100,000 litres of refined oil, and bottle 150,000 litres. MEO employs 60 people, and it is the only company that covers the whole olive oil sector in Syria.

It is indeed too early to draw a conclusion about this investment, but MEO intends to grow rapidly on the local market, in a first phase, before targeting other markets of the region. It relies on two essential factors: the fact that Syria is among the five major olive producers in the world, and intends to become the leader thanks to a ‘’live tree park’’ in excess of 80 million trees, and on the setting up of the Arab Free Trade Zone which will eliminate the custom barriers between the countries of the region.