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Dur­ing a con­ven­tion held in Patras ear­lier this month the Greek Min­is­ter of Rural Devel­op­ment and Food, Van­ge­lis Apos­tolou, announced that the Kala­mata cul­ti­var of table olives would make its way to the national list of plant vari­eties of Greece. The aim is to enable the co-exis­tence of two dis­tinct prod­ucts — Kala­mata Olives and Kala­mata Olives PDO — pro­vid­ing a solu­tion for pro­duc­ers that exist out­side the Messinia region.

Cur­rently, the Kala­mata olives vari­ety car­ries a Pro­tected Des­ig­na­tion of Ori­gin (PDO) tag, used to com­mu­ni­cate its qual­ity to con­sumers in the Euro­pean Union and beyond. A PDO is ascribed after a lengthy and stren­u­ous process where tech­ni­cal require­ments must be met.

PDO labels are, how­ever, by default geo­graph­i­cally bounded to refer to prod­ucts made only in spe­cific areas of Euro­pean Union coun­try mem­bers. In the case of Kala­mata olives, the label is used specif­i­cally for olive fruits pro­duced in the region of Messinia in the south­west of the coun­try, caus­ing pro­duc­ers in other areas to com­plain about the under­min­ing of their olives which are also of the same vari­ety.

Now, the min­is­ter has stepped in to address the issue by pledg­ing to add the Kala­mata olives cul­ti­var (some­times mar­keted as Kala­mon olives) to the national list of plant vari­eties, cre­at­ing a new com­mer­cial vari­ety of table olives.

Apos­tolou explained that the inten­tion of the Min­istry is to pro­mote both prod­ucts and gain even larger mar­ket shares. ​“Greece ranks sec­ond in the world when it comes to table olives exports,” he said. ​“The value of exports exceeds €300 mil­lion ($366 mil­lion) and most of it comes from Kala­mata olives of which 80 per­cent of the entire pro­duc­tion, around 40,000 tons, is exported.”

“A total of 21 com­pa­nies have been cer­ti­fied in the pro­cess­ing and pack­ag­ing of PDO Kala­mata olives and quan­ti­ties came in at 190 tons in 2011, 53 tons in 2012, 233 tons in 2014, and 277 tons in 2015. Kala­mata olives that did not bear the PDO badge faced a lot of prob­lems dur­ing the last five years… This allowed our inter­na­tional com­peti­tors to take advan­tage and fill the gaps in the mar­kets by repeat­edly using the ​‘Kala­mata olives’ label to name their prod­ucts,” Apos­tolou explained.

“With the sug­gested solu­tion, which is in accor­dance with the leg­is­la­tion of the Euro­pean Union, we intend to enable both prod­ucts to exist and intro­duce poli­cies that will rein­force their mar­ket posi­tion. In other words, we want to strengthen ​‘Kala­mata olives PDO’ by ele­vat­ing its qual­ity stan­dards and at the same time enable the Kala­mata cul­ti­var to be freely traded in the Euro­pean and inter­na­tional mar­kets.”

Unsur­pris­ingly, the minister’s state­ment did not go with­out crit­i­cism in Messinia. SYMEPOP, the asso­ci­a­tion of the local pro­duc­ers of table olives, opposed the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of the Kala­mata olives name by argu­ing that Greece has abol­ished its PDO tags for many prod­ucts and now plans to do the same for Kala­mata olives, one of its stronger brand names in the food sec­tor world­wide.

The mayor of the city of Kala­mata, Panayi­o­tis Nikas, sum­moned Apos­tolou to revoke his ​“cat­a­strophic deci­sion” which, if sus­tained, ​“will enable any­one in the world to name their prod­ucts Kala­mata olives pro­vided that they are of the Kala­mata cul­ti­var.”

It remains to be seen in what way the release of the name usage will affect the pro­duc­tion and exports.

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