Deoleo Records Loss on Nearly €1B Revenue

The multinational olive oil bottler recorded €54.5 million of losses in 2024 largely due to ongoing litigation in Italy.

High prices contributed to the world’s largest olive oil bottler reporting €996 million in sales revenue in 2024, a 19 percent increase compared to the previous year.

However, its annual report shows that Deoleo lost €54.5 million last year, up from €34.3 million in 2023.

Officials cited the company’s ongoing legal issues, including the litigation facing Italian subsidiary Carapelli Firenze, as the main reason for the losses.

Based on two unfavorable court rulings, the company said it would allocate €64.7 million for back taxes and penalties if the rulings are upheld. Deoleo is waiting for Italy’s Supreme Court to decide whether to take up the case.

The dispute stems from a legal maneuver Carapelli used to import olive oil through a Swiss subsidiary. The oil was later bottled in Italy and re-exported outside the EU.

Switzerland is not a member state but has a free trade agreement with the E.U.

Deoleo said it understood this practice to fall within a European customs law exemption, allowing it to avoid paying tariffs on olive oil imports. However, Italian customs officials disagreed and opened a case against Carapelli in 2014.

Deoleo financial director Enrique Weickert said Italian customs authorities requested the first payment in February.

“The result for the year is very negative, but 90 percent of this result is related to the provision we have made for the litigation in Italy,” he told reporters on a conference call, adding that the company has “very solid arguments” should the Supreme Court decide to hear the case.

Away from the legal issues, Weickert described 2024 as “difficult and complicated.”

The company struggled to source olive oil at the start of the year as olive oil stocks fell close to zero after the second-consecutive poor harvest across Spain and the Mediterranean.

In the year’s second half, the company was impacted by steadily declining prices as many countries in the region prepared for harvest rebounds.

Weickert said olive oil consumption fell by eight percent in Spain and the United States and two percent in Italy in 2024.

However, the company indicated the business was still strong, pointing to a ten percent increase in EBITDA, which reached €33.4 million. EBITDA is a performance metric that helps assess how much profit a business generates from its core operations.

Weickert added that the company achieved its gross unit margin objective of €0.69 per liter due to the “effective” transfer of raw material prices to sales prices.

The company also cited several other positive financial indicators, including a four percent decrease in net financial debt, a 72 percent increase in its cash position and a binding agreement to refinance €160 million of debt in June.

Against the backdrop of renewed tariff threats by United States President Donald J. Trump, Weickert highlighted the U.S. market’s importance to the company.

He said about 38 percent of the company’s EBITDA is generated in the U.S. He emphasized that increased tariffs would “only make the American consumer pay more for a healthy product that comes from the Mediterranean basin.”

Deoleo has already considered ways to minimize the impact of potential tariffs, such as “building an additional stock cushion” and possibly “bottling locally in the United States.”