Sovena Group


Sovena Group is one of the largest Portuguese agribusiness holding companies, producing cooking oils, olive oils, olives and soap. It has its own farmyards in Portugal and several other countries.

History

Sovena was founded in the 1956 in Portugal, as a joint-venture of Companhia União Fabril, Macedo e Coelho and Sociedade Nacional de Sabões. After the Carnation Revolution of 1974 it was nationalized. Jorge de Mello, an heir of the disbanded CUF conglomerate, rebuilt the company through a new holding called Nutrinveste. In 2004, the Nutrinveste Group sales turnover reached USD 840 million. In 2005 Nutrinveste sold its Compal and Nutricafés businesses. The new consolidated Sovena Group was created in 2008. By this time intensive olive groves with a high density planting, usually 500 to 750 trees per acre, modern irrigation systems, namely drop by drop, and also more rational fertilization were set up by the company in several locations across the world, mainly in Portugal, Spain, Morocco and Tunisia.

Organization

Sovena is currently present worldwide. The company has four different inter-related business areas that cover the olive oil, table olive, vegetable oil and also soap value chain.
Its factories are scattered around Portugal, Spain, the U.S.A. and Tunisia, but it also has commercial teams in Brazil and Angola, and it exports to more than 70 other countries on all 5 continents.
In both the Portuguese and the Spanish operations, it sells seeds for planting and buys back the production of farmers, that it then used to crush and refine vegetable oils.