Greek Producers Await Reopening of Restaurants, Tourism

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After six months in lock­down with some remain­ing open only for take­out, eater­ies in Greece are prepar­ing to reopen fully by May 3.

While restric­tive mea­sures will reduce seat­ing capac­ity and require social dis­tanc­ing, olive oil indus­try pro­fes­sion­als believe that the reopen­ing of the food busi­nesses could put the stag­nant mar­ket back in motion.

“Unfortunately, olive oil did not get the prices it deserved and grow­ers and pro­duc­ers are con­cerned,” said Myron Hiletzakis, the deputy head of the Agricultural Association of Heraklion.

Hiletzakis added that if the restau­rants open up, they will be able to absorb the 30,000 to 40,000 tons of olive oil remain­ing in reserve on Crete. Otherwise, the next har­vest­ing sea­son will open with the trou­bling prob­lem of large unsold quan­ti­ties of olive oil.

Other Cretan pro­duc­ers also expect an increase in demand. However, they are unsure to what extent the locally-pro­duced olive oil will be chan­neled to restau­rants and hotels.

“There are 100 tons of extra vir­gin olive oil cur­rently stored at my facil­i­ties and I already had some calls from local tav­erns look­ing to buy,” the owner of the Despina Blavakis mill near Heraklion told Olive Oil Times.

“The restart of the food sec­tor will give a kick to demand,” he added. ​“However, there are always the impon­der­ables of the mar­ket to con­sider: dur­ing the lock­down, the con­sumers used to buy olive oil from the super­mar­ket and cook at home.”

“Now, with the eater­ies reopen­ing, the demand for olive oil from restau­rants and tav­erns will increase, but the retail sales of olive oil will drop since many peo­ple will go out for din­ner,” the mill owner con­tin­ued.

“There is also the case of restau­rants and hotels using veg­etable oils instead of olive oil for the prepa­ra­tion of their meals, which lim­its our share of the mar­ket,” Blavakis said. ​“I hope that the mar­ket will grad­u­ally bal­ance to its sta­tus before the pan­demic.”

Despite the mediocre expec­ta­tions of pro­duc­ers, there have been some recent trans­ac­tions in the sec­tor, with small vol­umes of extra vir­gin olive oil exceed­ing €3.00 per kilo­gram at ori­gin in some areas of the coun­try.

In Crete, the first sale of olive oil exceed­ing the €3 psy­cho­log­i­cal limit took place in the Zakros asso­ci­a­tion of pro­duc­ers in the east­ern part of the island, where 30 tons of high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil, with acid­ity lev­els of 0.38 per­cent, were sold for €3.13 per kilo­gram.

In the Monemvasia region of Lakonia, a sim­i­lar price tag of €3.10 was fetched for 200 tons of extra vir­gin olive oil, with the rel­a­tively high price attrib­uted by local olive oil pro­fes­sion­als to the reopen­ing of eater­ies in Italy.

One of the high­est prices of the sea­son so far was reached in Messenia, where a Greek trader offered €3.51 per kilo­gram for 40 tons of extra vir­gin olive oil with a Protected Designation of Origin cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in an auc­tion held by the Agricultural Association of Glyfada.

“My esti­ma­tion is that there is an upward trend in olive oil prices in the mar­ket now,” Athanasios Katsas, a mem­ber of the asso­ci­a­tion, said. ​“We do not know if this trend will con­tinue for long. If we take into account what has hap­pened the past years, it would be good for them [pro­duc­ers] to start sell­ing now.”

Tourism is also expected to bounce back in the coun­try. By mid-May, Greece will start accept­ing tourists from the E.U. mem­ber states and other coun­tries, includ­ing the United States, Serbia and Israel, to put its tourism indus­try back on track.

In Halkidiki, a pop­u­lar tourist des­ti­na­tion in north­ern Greece, some olive oil pro­fes­sion­als are unsure how the tourist sea­son will affect the demand for olive oil.

“Prices of olive oil in our area are usu­ally among the high­est in the coun­try due to the supe­rior qual­ity,” the own­ers of the Vagio Agrofarms bot­tling and export­ing com­pany told Olive Oil Times.

“However, the pro­duc­ers are skep­ti­cal and do not cur­rently sell,” they added. ​“We also have a lot of cus­tomers such as tourist shop own­ers who every year bot­tle their olive oil to sell in their shops under their brand, but most of them have not yet shown up this sea­son.”

“Despite the open­ing of tourism, there is still a lot of uncer­tainty in the mar­ket and small or larger pro­duc­ers are still on hold,” the own­ers con­cluded.

However, for Zacharoula Vassilakis of Ladopetra, a grower and olive oil pro­ducer based in the area, there are bet­ter prospects for the sec­tor.

“The food and tourist facil­i­ties reopen­ing in Halkidiki will nat­u­rally require more olive oil,” Vassilakis told Olive Oil Times.

“We sell locally and we also export to Europe, and to tell the truth, the pan­demic had lit­tle impact on our busi­ness,” she added. ​“Over the years, our cus­tomers have learned to trust the qual­ity and our organic extra vir­gin and PDO Agourelio [early-har­vested olive oil] have always been a hit among them.”

“The times are chal­leng­ing, but we expect to retain our pace of sales for our qual­ity prod­ucts and hope­fully increase it dur­ing the next months,” Vassilakis con­cluded.

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