`Spanish Olive Oil Exports Surpass One Million Metric Tons - Olive Oil Times
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Spanish Olive Oil Exports Surpass One Million Metric Tons

By Olive Oil Times Staff
Sep. 25, 2014 09:46 UTC
Summary Summary

Spain has reached a mile­stone by export­ing over one mil­lion met­ric tons of olive oil for the first time in his­tory, with the export mar­ket nearly dou­bling that of domes­tic demand. This increase in exports is attrib­uted to a record har­vest and Spain’s dom­i­nance in the global olive oil mar­ket, although pro­duc­tion is expected to drop sig­nif­i­cantly in the upcom­ing sea­son.

Less than one month away from wrap­ping up the cur­rent (2013/14) cam­paign, reports out of Spain indi­cate that the coun­try has sur­passed one mil­lion met­ric tons in exported olive oil for the first time in his­tory.

According to El Pais, Spain’s export mar­ket has been grow­ing steadily in recent years and is nearly dou­ble that of its cur­rent domes­tic demand. While the inter­nal mar­ket has fluc­tu­ated min­i­mally around 550,000 MT, exports have almost dou­bled, increas­ing from an aver­age of around 600,000 MT in the ​’90s to an esti­mated 1.1 mil­lion MT for the sea­son end­ing this month.

According to Asoliva, the marked increase in exports this cam­paign is mainly due to a record har­vest (1,775,000 MT) that occurred when prices were already low. Moreover, Spain was vir­tu­ally the only coun­try among its com­peti­tors in Europe and North Africa (namely Greece, Italy, Turkey and Morocco) to have a stel­lar har­vest.

The record is short-lived, how­ever, with ana­lysts pre­dict­ing a steep drop-off in Spanish olive oil pro­duc­tion for the 2014/15 sea­son.

The main export mar­ket for bot­tled olive oil, as usual, was the European Union (60,000 MT), fol­lowed by the United States (20,000 MT), Australia and Brazil (17,000 MT each), China (12,000 MT), Japan (8,000 MT) and Russia (7,000 MT). Spain is cur­rently the lead­ing exporter to the United States, China and Japan, while Italy retains its foothold in Germany and Canada.

Two com­pa­nies have been cru­cial to the rapid growth of the U.S. mar­ket. The first is the Sevilla-based Portuguese com­pany Sovena, which was forced to buy Spanish oil to meet its demand in the United States; the sec­ond, Pomperian, is a sup­plier to Costco.

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