Lot: After a complicated year, La Capel’s co – operative is trying to “refocus”

Health crisis, fire and judicial liquidation … The year 2020 was very special for the La Capel co – operative. Despite the continuing crises, the group is dealing with a positive net result of just over 1.3 million euros.

The cooperative is not safe from the health crisis. “The closure of restaurants has had a major impact on our duck activities and the reduction in Italian outlets has affected the beef sector. This has reduced our turnover. ”

Judicial liquidation and fire

End of June 2020, the announcement of the liquidation of Arcadie Sud-Ouest creates a shock wave. La Capel was one of the shareholders at the time and above all its slaughterhouses were the main customers of the co – operative. Bankruptcy forces the co – operative to increase its provisions: “there was an additional impact of € 300,000 in 2020, 8 million in 2019 and 1 million in 2018”, the director states.

Latest disaster: night 13 to 14 July fire breaks out premises of the company La Quercynoise in Gramat, forcing the cooperative to transfer its activity to other “neighborhood and competitive” abattoirs in the Southwest for 3 weeks.

“Excellent employees

However, this assessment would be “largely offset” by other elements, in particular the recovery in lamb price and favorable weather for the vines in 2020. “During the Arcadia crisis, members continued to deliver to us , which made it possible to save all the goodwill, especially at Gramat “, emphasizes Pierre-Olivier Prévot.” We were also able to rely on excellent employees: the shops opened during the pandemic and the teams were able to adapt to the 2019 social plan ”.

“The cooperative is aware of what has been done. The board of directors therefore wanted to refocus on its main activities: animal production and distribution,” says Gérard Lavinal.

Strengthened partnerships

From now on, La Capel’s strategy is about strengthening and building partnerships. One of the largest is the one owned by the Tarn-et-Garonne Qualisol cooperative: it belongs to cereals. “The challenge is to improve member production. Today we are harvesting increasingly different cereals. By pooling our resources we can better segregate, so sell better, and ultimately to better reward farmers “, develops Pierre-Olivier Prévot.

Another partnership between La Capel and the Altitude group is currently being considered. The form is still unclear, but the president of La Capel wants to be sure: “It is not our goal to build a large cooperative that would move from its base and its members”.

Finally, in the sheep sector, a contracting process was launched with Destrel Viandes. As for the pork sector, it must be fully surrendered to the Pork Pork Alliance co – operative, which will ensure its future management.