`'Worrisome' Fall in World Olive Oil Trade - Olive Oil Times
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'Worrisome' Fall in World Olive Oil Trade

By Julie Butler
Mar. 10, 2014 08:31 UTC

Olive oil imports are down in all the major world mar­kets, a sit­u­a­tion the International Olive Council (IOC) finds alarm­ing.

IOC fig­ures for the first three months of the 2013/14 olive oil sea­son — October to December 2013 — show trade into the biggest two mar­kets out­side the European Union (EU), the United States (US) and Brazil, have fallen a tenth on the same period last year.

And the declines in imports of olive oil and olive pomace oil by the next biggest buy­ers are: Japan 1 per­cent, China 20 per­cent, Canada 8 per­cent, Australia 25 per­cent and Russia 9 per­cent.

This is despite the IOC pre­dict­ing In its trade fore­casts late last November that sales into these mar­kets would main­tain their vol­umes this sea­son except in the cases of the US, China and Australia, where mod­est growth of nearly 0.7, 2.6 and 5.2 per­cent respec­tively was expected.

According to the IOC’s February mar­ket newslet­ter, extra-EU imports in October and November were down 14 per­cent and intra-EU acqui­si­tions down 4 per­cent on the same two months the pre­vi­ous sea­son. (EU data for December 2013 was not yet avail­able,)

IOC: sit­u­a­tion wor­ri­some and requires close scrutiny

The IOC took some heart from the fact that in com­par­i­son with December 2012, imports were up last December in Australia, Brazil, Canada and Russia. However, the reverse was the case in the US, Japan and China, the world’s 1st, 3rd and 4th biggest importers in terms of vol­ume out­side the E.U.

Olive oil and olive pomace oil trade fig­ures from the International Olive Council February 2014 mar­ket newslet­ter

“The imme­di­ate inter­pre­ta­tion is that avail­able sup­plies in the new sea­son were not at hand for export in the first two months of 2013/14 (October and November 2013), par­tic­u­larly in Spain because of its low level of pro­duc­tion in 2012/13, but this does not seem valid for the December fig­ures for China, Japan (to a lim­ited extent) and the United States (where the November fig­ures were bet­ter), which are three key importer coun­tries.

“This sit­u­a­tion is wor­ri­some and will require close scrutiny of the fig­ures for January 2014,” the IOC said in its newslet­ter.

World trade in table olives

Table olive imports in the first three months of the 2013/14 crop year (October – December 2013) rose by 4 per­cent in the United States and 1 per­cent in Australia but fell by 14 per­cent in Canada, 11 per­cent in Russia and 9 per­cent in Brazil.

EU data for December 2013 was not avail­able but in the first two months of the table olive crop year, intra-EU acqui­si­tions slumped 11 per­cent and imports from non-EU coun­tries by 7 per­cent.

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