In Turkey, Olive Oil Exports Rise with Prices and Production

The rising volume and value of Turkish olive oil exports have been fueled by strong production, surging prices and more branded oils.
Photo: Ayvaco
By Paolo DeAndreis
Dec. 8, 2022 14:35 UTC

The value of olive oil exports from Turkey has grown 50 per­cent in the 2021/22 crop year, accord­ing to fig­ures pub­lished by the Aegean Exporters’ Associations (EIB).

From November 2021 to October 2022, olive oil ship­ments from the coun­try amounted to 3.75 tril­lion lire (€190 mil­lion).

The EIB attrib­uted the increase to high olive oil prices on the inter­na­tional mar­ket, a 32-per­cent rise in export vol­umes and a sig­nif­i­cant increase in pack­aged ship­ments.

See Also:Olive Oil Trade News

Turkey exported 58,000 tons of olive oil dur­ing this period, com­pared with 44,000 tons in the pre­vi­ous sea­son.

Citing EIB’s data, local media reported that the United States remained the pri­mary importer of Turkish olive oil, with a turnover of $75 mil­lion (€71.4 mil­lion).

According to Turkey’s trade min­istry, olive oil exports to the U.S. have been steadily increas­ing in recent years in quan­tity and value. In 2015, Turkey sold 1,800 tons to the U.S., val­ued at slightly more than $8 mil­lion (€7.6 mil­lion).

Spain and Japan were the sec­ond and third largest importers of Turkish olive oil, pur­chas­ing $24 mil­lion (€22.9 mil­lion) and $17 mil­lion (€16.2 mil­lion), respec­tively.

EIB pres­i­dent Davut Er empha­sized the impor­tance of indi­vid­u­ally pack­aged olive oil ship­ments, 53 per­cent of the total, in increas­ing the value of Turkish exports.

While a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of Turkish olive oil exports are still in bulk, pack­ag­ing, label­ing and brand­ing are cru­cial to increase mar­ket value and pro­mote local extra vir­gin olive oil on the inter­na­tional mar­kets.

Our pomace exports reached $24 mil­lion with a 178 per­cent increase,” Er told local media. Our aver­age olive oil export price increased by 12 per­cent in the 2021/22 crop year to $3,458 (€3,294) per ton.”

He also empha­sized how the cur­rent crop year is expected to break records regard­ing table olive and olive oil yields.

This sea­son, our olive oil sec­tor reached the high­est fig­ures in its his­tory,” Er said. We left behind a suc­cess­ful sea­son with 730,000 tons of olives… With these fig­ures, Turkey will rise to first place in the world for table olives and sec­ond for olive oil.”

Given the extra­or­di­nary esti­mated pro­duc­tion, Er added olive oil and table olive exports could reach $500 mil­lion (€476 mil­lion) next year.

Citing sig­nif­i­cant pro­duc­tion decreases across most of Europe and North Africa, Alper Alhat, Akhisar Commodity Exchange chair­man, said new oppor­tu­ni­ties are appear­ing for the Turkish pro­duc­ers.

This will be a great oppor­tu­nity for exports,” he said. We think the num­bers will increase this year because we are talk­ing about a prod­uct that is not avail­able in the world but is abun­dant in Turkey.”

Therefore, I would like to state that we have a very valu­able prod­uct,” Alhat added. I think we will see a big increase in exports.”

Along with olive oil, the EIB said total agri­cul­tural exports rose by 17 per­cent last year, with a turnover of $6.6 bil­lion (€6.3 bil­lion).



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