“The Osem Concern secretly and without our knowledge sold to a third party control of the Beit Hashita olive pickle factory for NIS 55 million, including the rights to produce the kibbutz’s olives and pickles,” the lawsuit filed in the Tel Aviv District Court yesterday, by Adv. Yoram Aviram from the office of Aviram-Wittenberg.
Kibbutz Beit Hashita demands in the lawsuit to cancel all agreements that allow Osem to produce the olives and pickles under the brand name Olives Beit Hashita and to cancel the agreement. In addition, the kibbutz is demanding NIS 6.3 million from Osem for claiming that the company took over 50 dunams of kibbutz land illegally without paying the land use fee.
The lawyers claim that Osem violated the agreements with the kibbutz by secretly and in violation of the agreements given the right given to it to produce the products bearing the brand name Olive Beit Hashita, which has existed since 1935.
Control of the plant she rented from Kibbutz Beit Hashita was transferred to a subsidiary of the nuts company, Marketing and Roasting Ltd. It was further alleged that Osem also did not pay the kibbutz water and electricity bills in the amount of NIS 700,000. The olives and pickles, the reputation and the right to use the Beit Hashita olive brand.
Members of the kibbutz were recently shocked to discover that Osem sold, for a sum of no less than NIS 55 million, all the rights to produce the pickles as well as the use of Beit Hashita olives’ reputation and trademark to an unknown company that roasts and markets nuts, which even boasted Beit Hashita Industries Ltd.
This was done when the two hid from the kibbutz the real agreement between them and described the industrial company as a subcontractor of Osem.
For this fundamental violation, the kibbutz claims that it is entitled to cancel the agreements between it and Osem and even petitions for a permanent restraining order, which prohibits Osem and Beit Hashita Industries Ltd. from using the name Olive Beit Hashita.
The kibbutz recently won an eviction lawsuit filed through the law firm of Aviram-Wittenberg against Beit Hashita Industries Ltd. for illegal use of four kibbutz parking lots.
The Magistrate’s Court in Afula accepted the kibbutz’s claim that Beit Hashita Industries Ltd. owns the parking lots without an agreement, and ordered it to vacate the parking lots and pay the kibbutz expenses. Osem-Nestle has not yet received the lawsuit. .