China’s Olive Oil Production Climbs, but Harvest Outlook Remains Uneven

Summary

China’s olive oil indus­try is expe­ri­enc­ing growth, with pro­duc­tion reach­ing a record 12,200 met­ric tons in the 2024/25 crop year, though some dis­pute the fig­ures. Producers in var­i­ous provinces are cau­tiously opti­mistic about the 2025/26 har­vest, with expec­ta­tions vary­ing by region and pre­dic­tions of fur­ther growth in the indus­try in the com­ing years.

This is the fifth in a series of reports on the evo­lu­tion of China’s olive oil indus­try.

Olive oil pro­duc­tion is on an upward tra­jec­tory in China, the world’s sec­ond-largest and sec­ond most pop­u­lous coun­try.

According to Wang Ruiyuan, chair­man of the expert com­mit­tee of the China Grain and Oil Industry Association, the coun­try pro­duced a record 12,200 met­ric tons of olive oil from nearly 2.2 mil­lion mu (146,667 hectares) of olive groves in the 2024/25 crop year.

Ruiyuan announced the fig­ures, rep­re­sent­ing a nearly five-fold increase over the past decade, dur­ing an olive-grow­ing and tech­nol­ogy con­fer­ence in Yunyang, Hubei.

However, a for­mer finance min­istry offi­cial now involved in the indus­try dis­puted the data, esti­mat­ing pro­duc­tion at between 6,000 and 8,000 tons in 2024/25.

Looking ahead to the 2025/26 har­vest, which began in early October and is expected to con­clude before the end of the year, grow­ers and millers report cau­tious opti­mism, though con­di­tions vary widely by region.

Bai Xiaoyang, chair­man of the Longnan Tianyuan Olive Company, said he expects a slight decline from last sea­son, fore­cast­ing a total har­vest of about 450 tons.

He told Olive Oil Times that har­vest­ing has already con­cluded in Yunnan, where China’s first olive tree was planted by Premier Zhou Enlai in 1964, pro­duc­ing about 120 tons.

The south­ern province, which bor­ders Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar, recorded a smaller crop than last year, which Bai attrib­uted to an off-year in the olive tree’s nat­ural alter­nate bear­ing cycle.

Meanwhile, oper­a­tions in Gansu province, which account for the bulk of China’s olive oil pro­duc­tion, are still under­way and are expected to yield between 160 and 180 tons.

In Longnan dis­trict, fel­low Gansu-based pro­ducer Olive Times antic­i­pates a 20 per­cent increase in out­put, with pro­duc­tion pro­jected to rise to between 700 and 1,000 tons.

“The main rea­son is that olive fruit pro­duc­tion is higher than last year, so oil out­put will increase,” a com­pany offi­cial said.

Dry con­di­tions ahead of the har­vest allowed oil yields to reach up to 20 per­cent in ter­raced Arbequina groves, where olives are hand-picked by local farm­ers and sold through a coop­er­a­tive to Olive Times and other nearby mills.

The trees were heav­ily laden with fruit when Olive Oil Times vis­ited the area in mid-har­vest.

Farther south in Sichuan province, pro­duc­ers also expect mixed results. The father-and-son team Ziyun Jin and Chongqing Jin of Fattoria Zhongyi fore­cast pro­duc­tion will rise from 130 tons in 2024 to 200 tons in 2025.

They attrib­uted the steady growth to a self-imposed goal of plant­ing 400 mu (27 hectares) of new groves annu­ally, with out­put grad­u­ally increas­ing as trees mature.

By con­trast, pro­duc­ers at Anyang Lake Olive Oil expect their Sichuan pro­duc­tion to decline by about 50 per­cent.

“There are three rea­sons for the decrease,” said Zhang Li, the company’s pro­duc­tion man­ager. ​“We expe­ri­enced a pro­longed drought ear­lier in the year. Last year was also a large har­vest, so this sea­son is nat­u­rally lower. Finally, heavy rain­fall dur­ing har­vest caused some olives to fall from the trees.”

While it remains too early to assess the company’s har­vest in Hubei province, Li said she expects a mod­est increase there due to heav­ier fruit loads com­pared to last year.

Nevertheless, 50 con­sec­u­tive days of rain before har­vest­ing began in early November caused fruit drop and pro­moted gloeospo­rium devel­op­ment in some groves.

Over the longer term, Anyang Lake Olive Oil expects pro­duc­tion to rise as it con­tin­ues plant­ing new groves in Sichuan and Hubei, aim­ing to reach 20,000 mu (1,333 hectares) split evenly between the two provinces.

The com­pany already oper­ates a mill in Sichuan with a pro­cess­ing capac­ity of two tons of olives per hour. It is invest­ing mil­lions of dol­lars in a new mill in Hubei, which is expected to pro­duce up to 50 tons of olive oil annu­ally.

Ender Gündüz, for­mer head of the International Olive Council’s econ­omy and pro­mo­tion unit, said China’s olive oil pro­duc­tion has the poten­tial to dou­ble in the com­ing years.

According to Gündüz, author­i­ties plan to plant 300,000 mu (20,000 hectares) of olive groves by 2032, with total planted area expected to reach 600,000 mu (40,000 hectares) by 2040.

Yu Ning, vice pres­i­dent of the olive sec­tion of China’s Forestry Economics Association, said olive cul­ti­va­tion is cur­rently con­cen­trated in five provinces.

Gansu leads with 1.17 mil­lion mu (78,300 hectares), fol­lowed by Sichuan with 452,000 mu (30,100 hectares), Yunnan with 260,000 mu (17,300 hectares), Chongqing with 165,000 mu (11,000 hectares) and Hubei with 125,000 mu (8,300 hectares).