Outrage and anger over the closure of Agama: "Damm's only obsession was to bring Laccao to Catalonia"

PalmAgama, owned by the Damm Group, announced this Tuesday the final closure from the Palma plant and brought an end to the last large dairy with its own production in Mallorca. The immediate impact, for now, has been felt in the countryside. Three Mallorcan livestock farms, which They depended on the central office as their main buyerThey are left in a situation of extreme fragility. progressive reduction of orders Its viability had already been strained, and the announcement of the closure confirms an uncertain scenario for farms conditioned by the additional costs of insularity and by competition from foreign products at lower prices.

Currently, Agama only buys milk from Son Carbó (in Campos), Ses Veles (in Canyamel), and Son Bernat (in Llubí). Miquel Vanrell, owner of Son Carbó, has harshly criticized Agama: "What they've done to us is unspeakable, it's a disaster. Damm's only obsession was..." to take Laccao to CataloniaAccording to the farmer, the dairy company had promised to buy their milk "at least until September," but negotiations fell through. "Now they've announced they won't buy any more milk and that the company is closing. We trusted Damm, who have supported local products, but look how it's turned out," he lamented. Now, the dairy faces an uncertain future, having just invested 1.5 million euros in improvements and modernization, and they are looking for new business models to keep the operation going. "We'll have to fight to survive," Vanrell concluded.

Meanwhile, the case of the Ses Veles dairy farm is completely different. In a meeting in September, Damm announced that they would no longer buy milk from them starting in March, and Toni Bauzà began the process of selling the cows. "Almost all of them will be leaving for the mainland this month." Bauzà asserts that this closure is "killing the sector" and that The government "has done nothing to prevent it""We're betting everything on tourism and letting agriculture die; Mallorca is a mess, there's hardly any sector left alive," he declared.

Strategic industrial project

This outcome contrasts sharply with the scenario depicted months earlier. Government of the Balearic Islands the company had declared a strategic industrial project with the aim of ensuring its continuity and preserving an infrastructure considered key to food sovereignty. The measure was intended to facilitate investment and streamline procedures to modernize the plant, with new packaging lines and a commitment to product diversification. However, as time passed, the commitments did not materialize as announced, and production activity gradually declined. Faced with the lack of substantial progress, the Executive Branch ultimately proposed the revocation of the strategic project declaration.

A Frustrated Cooperative

At that moment, the option arose to create a cooperative project with the workers, the Ministry of Agriculture and AgamaAlthough many points seemed to be progressing well, both the Regional Ministry and Damm excluded the workers from the negotiations, despite their repeated demands to participate and be informed about the project's progress. In this regard, the workers' spokesperson, Jesús Ávila, criticizes the fact that they have been "systematically ignored." "They haven't even given us the option to look for solutions; they informed us that they were closing, and we don't even know the reasons for the cooperative project's failure," he laments. The workers at the Agama factory will not be laid off; instead, Damm will relocate them to different companies and positions within the brewery on the island. However, there is significant discontent, as the spokesperson explained, because they wanted to be the new generation of dairy farmers in Mallorca, not do any other kind of work. "They always complain that there's no generational replacement in the Balearic countryside, and now that they have it, they're destroying it," Ávila harshly criticized.

Furthermore, the workers' spokesperson also asserts that the eight million investment to expand and improve the factory "made no sense" and that a "smaller" factory should have been built to "suit the actual workload and needs," with the remaining funds then invested accordingly.