`Olive Oil Producers in Spain Project Drop-Off - Olive Oil Times

Olive Oil Producers in Spain Project Drop-Off

By Julie Butler
Jun. 10, 2012 18:48 UTC

Jaén’s olive oil pro­duc­ers say their next har­vest will be just half of this year’s record out­put.

Having pro­duced the major­ity of Spain’s 1.6 mil­lion tons of olive oil this year — and in the wake of one of the dri­est win­ters in their life­times — they are expect­ing a dis­mal 2013.

Just how dis­mal will be clearer in a few weeks, said Cristóbal Gallego, an olive oil sec­tor spokesman for Andalusian Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Enterprises (FAECA). By then the esti­mates will be firmer but it is already clear that cer­tain parts of the world’s pro­duc­tion cap­i­tal have been hard hit by drought then frosts, he told EFE last week.

If prices stay low and if the fore­casts of such a reduced out­put prove accu­rate, the province of Jaén is going to suf­fer greatly, because that will fur­ther reduce the incomes of pro­duc­ers.”

His fears come as Spain accepts what could be up to a €100 bil­lion ($125b) European bailout for its banks and with most Spaniards already resigned to a bleak future with more aus­ter­ity mea­sures to come.

Cioloş action plan immi­nent

European Commissioner for Agriculture Dacian Cioloş’s pro­posed action plan for the olive oil sec­tor is expected to be debated by min­is­ters from Europe’s pro­ducer coun­tries at a meet­ing on June 18.

The plan is to be released pub­licly later this month and to include improve­ments in qual­ity con­trol, con­sumer pro­tec­tion and label­ing as well as struc­tural changes to pro­mote sus­tain­abil­ity.

Olive oil con­sump­tion down slightly in Spain

The lat­est house­hold con­sump­tion sur­vey in Spain shows a 0.2 per­cent drop for edi­ble oils. Olive oil con­sump­tion is down 0.2 per­cent and sun­flower oil 0.8 per­cent sea­son-on-sea­son for April 2011 to March this year.

Deoleo announces €20m pro­mo­tion cam­paign

Meanwhile, EFE reports that olive oil giant Deoleo (for­merly SOS) is to invest €20 mil­lion ($25m) to pro­mote its brands in emerg­ing mar­kets, where the mar­gins are bet­ter, and not in Spain, where the mar­ket is well-estab­lished and con­sump­tion is not expected to increase.

Speaking after the group’s annual gen­eral meet­ing in Madrid on June 6, Deoleo chief Jaime Carbó said it was time to focus on more prof­itable mar­kets, such as China and Brazil, where the group’s brands have enjoyed growth of 56 and 28 per­cent respec­tively.

It’s esti­mated that one in every five olive oil bot­tles sold world­wide already per­tains to Deoleo.

Non-pro­duc­ers Germany, the UK and Austria among biggest exporters to Hungary

Lastly, accord­ing to a Spanish Institute of Foreign Trade (ICEX) report on the foundling olive oil trade in Hungary, Italy has the biggest mar­ket share — 45 per­cent — but it and, to a worse extent, Greece, are los­ing ground to coun­tries that tra­di­tion­ally weren’t exporters, namely the United Kingdom, Germany and Austria.

The three now together hold a 16 per­cent mar­ket quota and have achieved it largely via exports of white label olive oil prod­ucts from big pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies based in those coun­tries, such as Unilever, which has its head­quar­ters in the UK.

The report says that the UK is par­tic­u­larly strong in the refined olive oil seg­ment and Germany in lam­pante.

Sunflower oil is the leader of fats and oils used in Hungary, with 65 per­cent of the mar­ket, while olive oil — which is a third more expen­sive — has just 2 per­cent.



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