`Spain Exports Rise 23% Amid Over-Production Fears - Olive Oil Times
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Spain Exports Rise 23% Amid Over-Production Fears

By Daniel Williams
Jul. 5, 2010 14:37 UTC
Summary Summary

Spain’s olive oil exports have increased by 23% this sea­son, help­ing to bal­ance the mar­ket amidst con­cerns of over-pro­duc­tion, while domes­tic demand has remained sta­ble. Despite a drop in imports, there is grow­ing con­cern among Spanish grow­ers about cov­er­ing costs due to the global increase in olive oil out­put and declin­ing farm-gate prices.

By Daniel Williams
Olive Oil Times Contributor | Reporting from Barcelona

According to the most recent fig­ures from the Agencia para el Aceite de Oliva (AAO), Spain’s exports have con­tin­ued to soar, already reach­ing some 430,000 tons this cam­paign, a 23% increase from last season’s fig­ures. Economists agree that this will help to equi­li­brate the mar­ket bal­ance this sea­son in the face of over-pro­duc­tion fears.

Despite a jump in exports, more than half of Spain’s olive oil pro­duced this cam­paign, some 741,100 tons, still remain in oil mills across the coun­try. This is a whop­ping 32% increase from fig­ures gleaned from the last 4 cam­paigns as EU advis­ers have urged pro­duc­ers to retain their prod­ucts to pre­vent an over­sat­u­ra­tion of the world olive oil mar­ket.

With respect to Spain’s domes­tic mar­ket, inter­nal demand has remained rel­a­tively sta­ble reach­ing 329,900 tons- a gen­tle 3% increase from the last cam­paign. At the same time, Spain’s olive oil imports have dropped 31% in rela­tion to the aver­age of the last 4 cam­paigns. This makes for a highly favor­able import-export ratio that some see as the result of an exhaus­tive inter­na­tional adver­tis­ing cam­paign under­taken by the Spanish gov­ern­ment.

In spite of this favor­able import-export ratio there is still grow­ing con­cern among Spanish grow­ers about cov­er­ing costs as global out­put of olive oil has con­tin­ued to soar and farm-gate prices have been on the decline since January 2005. In spite of heavy February rains that caused Spanish rivers to burst and threat­ened to deplete this season’s olive crop, the total vol­ume of Spanish olive oil reached 873,500 tons at the end of May 2010, a 24% increase in the aver­age taken from the past 4 sea­sons. Spain achieved a record olive oil out­put of 1.236 mil­lion tons two years ago.

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