`New Figures Show Growth in Imports and Higher Prices for Italian Olive Oil - Olive Oil Times

New Figures Show Growth in Imports and Higher Prices for Italian Olive Oil

By Olive Oil Times Staff
Mar. 11, 2011 09:42 UTC

The International Olive Council released fig­ures today show­ing olive oil imports into China increased by 60 per­cent for the 2009/2010 sea­son for a total of 20,565 tons, 89 per­cent of it com­ing from Europe. Spain was the main sup­plier (42 per­cent), fol­lowed by Italy (39 per­cent), Greece (7 per­cent) and Portugal (1 per­cent). Other exporters to China were Syria (4 per­cent), Australia (3 per­cent) and Turkey (2 per­cent).

Extra vir­gin olive oil accounted for 76 per­cent of China’s import vol­ume in the period, fol­lowed by refined olive oil and olive pomace oil with equal 12% shares.

Russia imported nearly 25,000 tons of olive oil in 2009/10, for an increase of 50 per­cent on the pre­vi­ous sea­son. 93 per­cent of imports were from EU coun­tries, the prin­ci­pal sup­pli­ers being Spain (62 per­cent), Italy (25 per­cent) and Greece (6 per­cent). The shares of Tunisia and Turkey were 4% and 3%, respec­tively. The break­down by prod­uct cat­e­gory for 2009/10 shows shares of 62 per­cent for extra vir­gin, 28 per­cent for refined and 10 per­cent for olive pomace oil.

India only imported 3,374 tons of olive oil, for an increase of 26 per­cent. Most (60 per­cent) was sup­plied by Spain with 34 per­cent from Italy. Turkey accounted for 5 per­cent of India’s imports. Extra vir­gin accounted for only 19 per­cent; the remain­ing 81 per­cent was refined olive oil.

Over the first three cumu­la­tive months of the sea­son (October – December) olive oil imports rose 20 per­cent in Australia and 11 per­cent into the United States. In Japan imports dropped 7 per­cent from the same period a year ago.

Olive oil prices dropped 8 per­cent in Spain com­pared with the pre­vi­ous year to €2.01/kg, and 4 per­cent in Greece (€1.95/kg) while in Italy they moved in the oppo­site direc­tion, going up by 14 per­cent to €3.07/kg. Recent weeks have seen a steep rise in prices in Italy con­firm­ing, the IOC said, the grow­ing dis­tance between the prices paid to pro­duc­ers in Italy and those paid in Spain and Greece.



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