Egypt Aims for Significant Increase in Olive Oil Exports

Summary

Egypt is focus­ing on increas­ing olive oil and table olive exports, with plans to export 1,000 met­ric tons of olive oil and 100,000 tons of table olives in the 2023/24 crop year. Challenges such as polit­i­cal insta­bil­ity, bureau­cracy, and lim­ited access to credit are hin­der­ing Egyptian pro­duc­ers, but invest­ments in tech­nol­ogy and sus­tain­able prac­tices are improv­ing the qual­ity of Egyptian olive oil.

Officials in Egypt have high­lighted the role of table olive and olive oil pro­duc­tion as strate­gic sec­tors with promis­ing export poten­tial, but the coun­try faces sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges.

According to International Olive Council data, Egypt was antic­i­pated to export 1,000 met­ric tons of olive oil and 100,000 tons of table olives in the 2023/24 crop year, which con­cludes at the end of September. Egypt is the world’s third-largest table olive exporter after Spain and Turkey.

Maysa Hamsa, the Egyptian Chamber of Commerce’s exec­u­tive direc­tor, called on a meet­ing of pro­duc­ers, gov­ern­ment offi­cials, reg­u­la­tors and researchers to develop a plan to increase olive oil exports.

Reda Abdel Jalil, the chamber’s direc­tor gen­eral of tech­ni­cal affairs, noted that Egypt’s steady olive oil pro­duc­tion lev­els, which have fallen below 40,000 tons only once in the past six crop years, coin­cid­ing with poor har­vests in the past two years in other parts of the Mediterranean cre­ated an open­ing for exporters.

Egypt pro­duced an esti­mated 40,000 tons of olive oil in 2023/24, vir­tu­ally all of which was sold domes­ti­cally. Some pro­duc­ers in the coun­try said they antic­i­pate a good har­vest in 2024/25.

“This sea­son, we expe­ri­enced a par­tic­u­larly fruit­ful and abun­dant har­vest,” Ramy Naguib Rammah, the co-owner of Rammah Olive Oil, a fam­ily-owned pro­ducer, told Olive Oil Times.

While Rammah said that export­ing olive oil is part of the company’s plans, the com­pany is focused on the domes­tic mar­ket — Egypt is home to 117 mil­lion peo­ple — and devel­op­ing tourism.

“Our pri­mary focus is on the local mar­ket, where we aim to raise aware­ness about olive oil and revive Egypt’s rich his­tory in its pro­duc­tion and uses,” he said. ​“While exports are part of our plans, they are not our top pri­or­ity now.”

“The prices we offer to the Egyptian mar­ket are sig­nif­i­cantly more prof­itable than the low offers we receive from importers com­pared to the high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil we offer,” he added.

Egyptian pro­duc­ers are strug­gling due to polit­i­cal insta­bil­ity, exces­sive bureau­cracy, a short­age of skilled labor and lim­ited access to credit.

Global events have led to the deval­u­a­tion of the Egyptian pound, high infla­tion and a lack of for­eign cur­rency. Increased table olive and olive oil exports are seen as a way to bring in Euros and U.S. dol­lars and help the econ­omy.

“While Egypt is one of the largest olive oil pro­duc­ers, it faces many chal­lenges in agri­cul­ture, pro­duc­tion and export,” Shayma Said El Araby, an econ­o­mist, told local media. ​“The main issue hin­der­ing Egypt’s lead­er­ship in olive oil cul­ti­va­tion and export is the lack of expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge among farm­ers.”

Rammah is among the pro­duc­ers invest­ing in state-of-the-art milling equip­ment as part of the company’s focus on qual­ity over quan­tity.

“We are using new tech­nol­ogy and have two auto­mated con­tin­u­ous lines: One is a three-phase line, and the other is a two-phase line, and both run with max­i­mum effi­ciency,” he said. ​“We also have a qual­ity con­trol unit, a lab­o­ra­tory to test per­ox­ide lev­els and acid­ity and a tast­ing panel to grade each prod­uct on a sen­sory level to iden­tify defects.”

Indeed, Rammah said the qual­ity of Egyptian olive oil has improved in recent years due to tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments. He added that farm­ers adopt sus­tain­able prac­tices to add value and reduce costs through­out pro­duc­tion and mar­ket­ing.

“Our olives are pes­ti­cide-free, GMO-free and hand-picked,” Rammah said. ​“We main­tain a small bee farm for pol­li­na­tion and employ the best water con­ser­va­tion prac­tices, includ­ing drip irri­ga­tion sys­tems and other inno­v­a­tive meth­ods to min­i­mize water usage and pre­vent wastage.”

“Additionally, we uti­lize renew­able energy sources, pri­mar­ily solar power,” he added. ​“We are the first brand in Egypt to imple­ment trace­abil­ity and trans­parency in the olive oil sup­ply chain, ensur­ing [cus­tomers can fol­low our] sus­tain­able prac­tices from farm to bot­tle.”

Attendees at the Chamber of Commerce meet­ing empha­sized the need to expand olive cul­ti­va­tion for oil pro­duc­tion and plant new high-den­sity and super-high-den­sity groves while main­tain­ing Egypt’s strong posi­tion in table olive pro­duc­tion. In 2023/24, Egypt pro­duced 600,000 tons of table olives, nearly one-fourth of the global total.

Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation data cited in local media show that Egypt has about 97,000 hectares of olive groves in pro­duc­tion, with another 11,300 hectares expected to come into pro­duc­tion soon.

According to the General Authority for Investment and Free Zones, Egypt has planted about 23 mil­lion olive trees since 2015, when President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi announced plans to plant 100 mil­lion olive trees.

“The Egyptian gov­ern­ment has under­taken a sig­nif­i­cant project to expand green spaces,” Rammah said. ​“They actively encour­age for­eign invest­ments and export oppor­tu­ni­ties by remov­ing any obsta­cles investors might face. Additionally, they have made remark­able progress in reduc­ing bureau­cracy.”

“It is unclear whether other olive oil pro­duc­ers are hes­i­tant to export or actively engage in export­ing,” he added. ​“What we know for cer­tain is that active exporters cur­rently export olive oil pri­mar­ily in bulk for­mat. We aim to export a final pack­aged prod­uct made in Egypt, which we are con­fi­dent can com­pete with high-end brands glob­ally.”

Yahia Mohamed Metwally Khalil, a pro­fes­sor of agri­cul­tural eco­nom­ics at the National Research Center, told local media that offi­cials and pro­duc­ers must iden­tify and tar­get spe­cific mar­kets where Egyptian olive oil will receive the most con­sid­er­able returns.

“Producers need to study for­eign mar­kets that demand olive oil and iden­tify the spe­cific vari­eties and stan­dards these mar­kets require to align pro­duc­tion with mar­ket pref­er­ences,” he said.

• Arab Finance
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