`Demand for Olive Oil in Spain Rises as Country Goes Into Coronavirus Lockdown - Olive Oil Times

Demand for Olive Oil in Spain Rises as Country Goes Into Coronavirus Lockdown

By Daniel Dawson
Mar. 19, 2020 14:23 UTC

Olive oil is among the most in-demand food prod­ucts in Spain as the coun­try faces an unprece­dented health cri­sis due to the spread of the Covid-19 coro­n­avirus, accord­ing to the pres­i­dent of the country’s national agri-food coop­er­a­tive.

Olive oil bot­tlers are work­ing 24 hours per day in three shifts with­out stop­ping the fac­tory,” Ángel Villafranca told El Diario.

According to data released by the global mar­ket­ing research firm Nielsen, olive oil pur­chases rose by five per­cent in the last week of February, com­pared with the same period last year. The last week of February is widely con­sid­ered to be the first week of the health cri­sis in the coun­try.

Purchases also increased in the first week of March, ris­ing by 0.9 per­cent rel­a­tive to the same period last year. Nielsen ana­lysts par­tially attrib­uted this slow down to gov­ern­ment rec­om­men­da­tions that peo­ple stay at home to help stem the spread of Covid-19.

Outside of Italy, Iran and China, Spain has been the hard­est hit by the pan­demic, report­ing 767 deaths and 17,147 con­firmed cases at the time of writ­ing.

Since the imple­men­ta­tion of the state of alarm’ by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on March 13, olive oil demand has slowed as even fewer peo­ple ven­ture out to the super­mar­ket, but bot­tlers con­tinue to work as quickly as ever to keep store shelves stocked at home and abroad.

We are not only talk­ing about Spain but we are also export­ing a good part of our prod­ucts,” Villafranca said. In Italy, Spanish trucks con­tinue to cir­cu­late and go daily to ware­houses.”



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