Diversification Drives Olitalia’s Global Success as Italy’s Olive Oil Sector Evolves

Summary

Olitalia, one of Italy’s largest olive oil bot­tlers and exporters, attrib­utes its suc­cess to diver­si­fi­ca­tion, with a diverse prod­uct port­fo­lio and cus­tomer base help­ing them over­come chal­lenges like the Covid-19 pan­demic and tar­iffs. The com­pany, which sells olive oil in 120 coun­tries, is focused on adapt­ing to remain com­pet­i­tive with other major pro­duc­ers and expand­ing global con­sump­tion through edu­ca­tion cam­paigns.

Diversification has been key to the suc­cess of one of Italy’s largest olive oil bot­tlers and exporters over its four-decade expe­ri­ence. 

As the 2025/26 har­vest gets under­way, chief exec­u­tive Angelo Cremonini said the company’s prod­uct port­fo­lio, diverse range of cus­tomers and inter­na­tional pro­duc­ing part­ners have helped Olitalia over­come myr­iad chal­lenges from the Covid-19 pan­demic to tar­iffs.

“We are very much diver­si­fied, sell­ing olive oil and seed oils to restau­rants and super­mar­kets,” Cremonini told Olive Oil Times. ​“This diver­si­fi­ca­tion helped us very much dur­ing Covid-19, when one chan­nel went to zero and the other com­pen­sated for it. Diversification is costly, but it allows us to grow.”

That flex­i­bil­ity has been cen­tral to Olitalia’s evo­lu­tion from a regional sup­plier into a global brand.

Founded more than 40 years ago, Olitalia began sup­ply­ing seed and olive oils to restau­rants on Italy’s Adriatic coast before expand­ing nation­wide and into con­sumer sales. The com­pany now sells about 30,000 tons of olive oil, mostly extra vir­gin sourced from Italy, Spain, Greece and Tunisia, in 120 coun­tries.

“ Each year is a dif­fer­ent story, espe­cially because of the change in the cli­mate,” Cremonini said.

Throughout the year, Olitalia’s agron­o­mists visit the company’s pro­duc­ing part­ners across the Mediterranean to check pre­cip­i­ta­tion lev­els in the groves, the blos­som­ing of the trees and how the fruit set evolves.

“We try to obtain the whole pic­ture of the crop in terms of quan­tity and qual­ity, and choose the best extra vir­gin olive oil for our objec­tives, such as taste pro­file,” he said.

As the har­vest begins, Cremonini, his brother and a team of five oth­ers also travel to the part­ner mills to take sam­ples and make deals. 

This year, he expects to pur­chase much more Italian olive oil, con­firm­ing that pro­duc­tion in the coun­try is expected to reach 300,000 met­ric tons, buoyed by a strong har­vest in the south.

“ Puglia, which accounts for about 50 per­cent of the total pro­duc­tion, has a very good crop com­pared to last year, as do Calabria and Sicily,” he said. ​“Puglia will pro­duce about 150,000 tons, Sicily will pro­duce about 30,000 tons, and Calabria will yield 40,000 tons.”

Despite the antic­i­pated pro­duc­tion rebound, Cremonini believes Italy’s olive oil sec­tor must adapt to remain com­pet­i­tive with Spain and other major pro­duc­ers.

“In Italy, we lack invest­ment com­pared with Spain,” which has dra­mat­i­cally improved pro­duc­tiv­ity in its olive groves and mills over the past 30 years, he said. ​“There is a need to invest in the sec­tor and change the model com­pletely.”

Cremonini argued that author­i­ties should encour­age farm­ers to plant Xylella fas­tidiosa-resis­tant vari­eties in the areas of Puglia impacted by the deadly olive tree pathogen.

He added that adopt­ing high-den­sity and super-high-den­sity groves where pos­si­ble would also make Italian pro­duc­tion more effi­cient, not­ing that a mech­a­nized har­vest can save an aver­age of €1 per kilo­gram of oil pro­duced.

Cremonini believes that pri­or­ity should be given to adapt­ing Italian cul­ti­vars to this sys­tem, such as Maurino, which has shown promise.

However, one of the lim­it­ing fac­tors for plant­ing more inten­sive olive groves in Italy is the rel­a­tively frag­mented nature of the sec­tor, which is mainly com­posed of small, fam­ily-run farms. 

Cremonini said this struc­ture lim­its their abil­ity to invest in tech­nol­ogy and buy inputs at com­pet­i­tive prices. 

“They have high costs because when they have to buy equip­ment and fer­til­izer, they have to buy them alone,” he said. ​“The gov­ern­ment should do some­thing to unite these pro­duc­ers, like the coop­er­a­tives in Spain, where farm­ers have much bet­ter buy­ing power and can share equip­ment for prun­ing and har­vest­ing.”

While Italy’s pro­duc­tion rebound, along with expec­ta­tions of fruit­ful har­vests in Spain and Tunisia, means that record-high prices at ori­gin will likely con­tinue to fall, Cremonini warned that tar­iffs imposed by the United States on European Union imports would raise prices for con­sumers.

“If we talk about the restau­rant and food ser­vice sec­tor in the United States, there is going to be an impact on the final con­sumer,” Cremonini said. ​“Our importers, dis­trib­u­tors and com­pany have small mar­gins, so we can­not afford to absorb these costs. The restau­rant owner will have to increase prices or change the menu.”

The tar­iffs, which cur­rently sit at 15 per­cent after being raised from the ini­tial rate of ten per­cent, will also raise prices in super­mar­kets in the com­ing months. Still, Cremonini does not expect demand to weaken. 

“When prices were at a record high, we saw that con­sump­tion did not decrease in the United States,” he said. ​“The American con­sumer knows it’s a very healthy prod­uct. Olive oil demand in the U.S. is inelas­tic.”

Along with the U.S. and Brazil, Cremonini said East Asia has become one of the company’s core mar­kets, under­scor­ing the role of edu­ca­tion and aware­ness in dri­ving con­sump­tion growth. 

According to Cremonini, Olitalia holds 70 per­cent of the Italian extra vir­gin olive oil mar­ket share in South Korea and 24 per­cent of the total olive oil mar­ket there. 

“Korean con­sumers love Italian food and appre­ci­ate pair­ing oils with dishes,” he said. ​“We see a shift from basic to high-end extra vir­gin olive oil.” 

Taiwan has shown sim­i­lar growth after years of edu­ca­tion cam­paigns. ​“We started with five ship­ping con­tain­ers and now sell 250. It was only a mat­ter of explain­ing the product’s ben­e­fits,” Cremonini added.

By con­trast, China remains a chal­leng­ing mar­ket. ​“Even the mildest extra vir­gin olive oils are con­sid­ered too strong,” he said. ​“They are used to peanut and other seed oils, so it’s not easy to grow there.”

Cremonini believes edu­ca­tion is key to expand­ing global con­sump­tion, which he agreed could, along with pro­duc­tion, reach four mil­lion tons as more con­sumers learn about olive oil’s health ben­e­fits. 

“Olive oil accounts for only two per­cent of global veg­etable fats,” he said. ​“There’s huge poten­tial to grow.”

Cremonini added that guided tast­ing is the most effec­tive way to get con­sumers to appre­ci­ate extra vir­gin olive oil. 

Indeed, some of the company’s 2025/26 har­vest will be sold in cobalt-blue glass bot­tles, which he said were inspired by the blue tast­ing glasses used by pro­fes­sional olive oil judges to avoid color bias.

Beyond mar­kets and edu­ca­tion, Cremonini high­lighted Olitalia’s com­mit­ment to low­er­ing the com­pa­ny’s envi­ron­men­tal foot­print. However, he empha­sized that sus­tain­abil­ity begins with eco­nomic via­bil­ity. 

“It has to be sus­tain­able from the eco­nomic point of view,” he said, not­ing that the com­pany con­tin­ues to use some plas­tic pack­ag­ing to meet mar­ket demand.

Still, Cremonini added that since 2018, Olitalia has shifted to bot­tles made entirely from recy­cled food-grade plas­tic.

The com­pany also pow­ers its oper­a­tions exclu­sively with renew­able energy, with half gen­er­ated by on-site solar pan­els and the other half through power pur­chase agree­ments, even pro­duc­ing its own glass bot­tles at a renew­able-pow­ered facil­ity.

“We decided to take small steps toward sus­tain­abil­ity not just because con­sumers appre­ci­ate it, but because it’s the right thing to do,” Cremonini said. ​“We can help the planet and still run a healthy busi­ness.”

“Sometimes it’s sim­ply a mat­ter of rethink­ing how we do things, ask­ing if there’s a bet­ter way to help the planet and our com­mu­nity,” he con­cluded.