Malaga-based company invests €6m in Tavira as it continues to diversify its production base in response to water shortage in southern Spain
Spanish tropicals giant Trops is expanding its avocado operation in Tavira, Portugal. According to a report in Jornal de Negócios, it will invest €6m in expanding its warehouse capacity in the region. Work on the new infrastructure is due to begin this week and expected to be completed by mid-2025.
General manager Enrique Colilles said the investment will improve the company’s operational efficiency in Portugal. The country is central to Trops’ growth strategy due to limitations imposed on expansion its home region.
La Axarquía in Andalusia, is the cradle of Spain’s tropical fruit industry and home to Trops as well as the other main Spanish producers. The region is currently in the grip of a prolonged drought which is having a severe impact on production – Trops’s own output of avocados and mangoes has dwindled in recent years from a high of 60,000 tonnes to around 20,000 tonnes.
In response, the company has intensified efforts to diversify its production base into new regions, including southern Portugal, Valencia and, most recently, Cádiz. It now operates nine facilities – three in Málaga, three in Granada, one in Valencia, one in Tavira and one in Cádiz, serving its 4,000+ associated growers. In 2022 the company achieved a turnover of €183m.
Meanwhile, Trops continues to back solutions to ease the water crisis in southern Spain. One of these, the Agua+S project, involves the construction of a desalination plant near the coast, along with a network of pumping stations, all powered by a renewable solar energy obtained from a floating photovoltaic park installed on a nearby reservoir.
Colilles said he sees this as an economical and sustainable way of reproducing the natural water cycle to achieve affordable water without generating waste.
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