Harvard Business Publishing (HBP) is the database of the best case studies by professors of Harvard Business School (world leader in creation, use and circulation of management case studies for teaching purposes). HBP also occasionally selects cases from other institutions.
The case is entitled “A Terroir Olive Oil Mill Against Agri-Food Multinationals”. In 2015, it received the EFMD Case Writing Awards prize in the category “Euro-Mediterranean Managerial Practices and Issues”.
The case deals with developments in the company Les Moulins de la Brague (LMB), a French Oil press that has existed for seven generations. LMB tried to find a profitable niche in a market occupied by multinationals whose products vary enormously in terms of price and quality.
How did the company manage to deal with a fall in olive production (due to poor weather conditions) and the plateauing of consumer interest in the health benefits of olive oil? At the same time the market was inundated by oils of various qualities: poor quality cheap oils and average quality oils that dominated the mass retail market, as well as many high quality brands.
You can obtain the case study
here.