`Spain Forecasts Production of 1.2M Tons - Olive Oil Times

Spain Forecasts Production of 1.2M Tons

By Erin Ridley
Oct. 26, 2015 16:50 UTC

Andalusia’s Minister of Agriculture, Fishing and Rural Development Carmen Ortiz revealed today that the gov­ern­ment antic­i­pates a sub­stan­tial increase in olive pro­duc­tion for the 2015 – 2016 har­vest sea­son.

National pro­duc­tion of olive oil could reach 1.2 mil­lion met­ric tons, he said, a 43 per­cent rise over last year’s out­put of just above 800,000 tons.

Meanwhile, the pro­duc­tion in Andalusia alone could exceed 1 mil­lion tons of oil, a 53 per­cent increase.

It is Spain’s lead­ing olive oil-pro­duc­ing region, Jaén — which saw one of the larger decreases in pro­duc­tion last year — that is poised for the most impres­sive increase this time. Estimates pre­dict its out­put to reach 485,000 tons of olive oil, up 111 per­cent from the 2014 – 2015 har­vest.

Other Andalusian regions are pre­dicted to see pro­duc­tion jumps as well, with Córdoba up 54 per­cent, Málaga 24 per­cent, Cádiz 17 per­cent, and Almería 16 per­cent.

The regions of Granada and Seville will main­tain roughly the same lev­els, whereas Huelva, whose pro­duc­tion was not affected last year, may actu­ally see a reduc­tion this year of 37 per­cent.

The over­all growth fore­cast, though just an early pre­dic­tion, could serve as a huge relief after last year’s low pro­duc­tion.

Ortiz explained that the com­bi­na­tion of the com­ing year’s pro­duc­tion and the remain­ing stock would allow Spain to meet its domes­tic needs of around 500,000 tons, while export­ing some 800,000 tons abroad.

The fore­cast was wel­come news for more than just the indus­try — con­sumers could see lower olive oil prices with the pro­duc­tion surge.

Ortiz was care­ful to point out that the num­bers were ini­tial pre­dic­tions that could change based on var­i­ous fac­tors over the course of the com­ing months of har­vest­ing.

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