Italy’s Olive Oil Market Heads Into 2026 with Thinner Margins and Renewed Volatility

Summary

Italy’s olive oil mar­ket in 2026 is char­ac­ter­ized by struc­turally reduced mar­gins, renewed volatil­ity, and mount­ing uncer­tain­ties. Despite recov­er­ing vol­umes across the Mediterranean, Italian grow­ers face chal­lenges such as high pro­duc­tion costs and pres­sure on ori­gin quo­ta­tions. The sec­tor is look­ing towards invest­ments in expand­ing olive grow­ing areas, research, and inno­va­tion to address the pro­duc­tion deficit and adapt to chang­ing cli­mate con­di­tions.

Structurally reduced mar­gins for olive grow­ers, renewed volatil­ity and mount­ing uncer­tain­ties are defin­ing Italy’s olive oil mar­ket as it enters 2026.

After two cam­paigns marked by record-high quo­ta­tions, whole­sale prices have entered a new phase of volatil­ity. Spain, the region’s price bench­mark and lead­ing pro­ducer, saw extra vir­gin olive oil prices increase by about €0.30 per kilo­gram in just 15 days in mid-February.

For many Italian grow­ers, price sus­tain­abil­ity remains the most press­ing issue. Production costs, from labor to energy and orchard man­age­ment, remain ele­vated, while recov­er­ing vol­umes across parts of the Mediterranean are renew­ing pres­sure on ori­gin quo­ta­tions.

Large retail­ers’ pric­ing strate­gies, which affect approx­i­mately 80 per­cent of the Italian mar­ket, con­tinue to shape mar­gin poten­tial at the farm level. In high-cost, frag­mented pro­duc­tion sys­tems, even mod­est cor­rec­tions can sig­nif­i­cantly erode returns.

“Italy’s olive grow­ing sec­tor, in the best cam­paigns, reaches 300,000 tons of olive oil,” Anna Cane, pres­i­dent of the olive oil group at the pro­duc­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion Assitol, told Olive Oil Times. ​“The domes­tic mar­ket alone requires around 550,000 tons, and exports call for about 400,000.” In such a struc­turally defi­cient sys­tem, she sug­gested, price dynam­ics, import flows and grower mar­gins are deeply inter­con­nected.

Imports are also cru­cial to some of the indus­try’s most exten­sive oper­a­tions. Cane said estab­lished brands have ​“learned to select raw mate­ri­als across the Mediterranean,” devel­op­ing what she described as a tra­di­tion of blend­ing, ​“the sar­to­r­ial abil­ity to com­bine olive oils from dif­fer­ent cul­ti­vars to cre­ate one with a unique fla­vor.”

Several ongo­ing invest­ments in the sec­tor, sup­ported by national and regional plan­ning, aim to expand olive-grow­ing areas to address the pro­duc­tion deficit.

International Olive Council (IOC) data show Italy’s decreas­ing olive oil out­put, from the 600,000 tons aver­aged in the 1990s to the 250,000 of the 2020s. The drop is mostly asso­ci­ated with a chang­ing cli­mate, Xylella fas­tidiosa, aging groves and lim­ited mech­a­niza­tion.

“We are get­ting used to liv­ing with a cer­tain degree of pre­car­i­ous­ness, but it is equally evi­dent that cli­mate insta­bil­ity requires open­ness and the abil­ity to source raw mate­r­ial from new sup­pli­ers,” Cane said.

“Expanding pro­duc­tion can only partly be achieved by expand­ing orchards. A tar­geted strat­egy is needed, com­bin­ing research and inno­va­tion to address the real pro­tag­o­nists of the sec­tor, cli­mate change and phy­topatholo­gies,” Cane said. ​“Those con­tinue to affect both vol­umes and mar­ket dynam­ics.”

Science and pre­ci­sion agri­cul­ture, she added, will be essen­tial, as ​“high tem­per­a­tures are open­ing new pos­si­bil­i­ties” and ​“the olive fron­tier is mov­ing north.”

Still, the cur­rent cam­paign is con­sid­ered a recov­ery. ​“We have had two very chal­leng­ing har­vests, due to extreme weather, Xylella in the South, reduced raw mate­r­ial avail­abil­ity and energy costs, which con­tributed to increas­ing extra vir­gin quo­ta­tions,” Cane said.

“Now we find our­selves in a dif­fer­ent frame­work, because not only Italy but the Mediterranean has recov­ered in terms of quan­ti­ties and pro­duc­tion.” Even if Spain is unlikely to reach 1,500,000 tons ini­tially fore­cast, she added, ​“the sce­nario appears more bal­anced and can be explained by entirely phys­i­o­log­i­cal eco­nomic dynam­ics.”

The domes­tic impact of price and sup­ply dynam­ics is fuel­ing a heated debate. In late January, the farm­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion Coldirettiwarned that over 500,000 tons of for­eign olive oil crossed Italy’s bor­ders in 2025, depress­ing national extra vir­gin olive oil prices and fuel­ing what it described as an opaque mar­ket envi­ron­ment.

As it recently hap­pened among Spanish farm­ers, imports from Tunisia drew spe­cial atten­tion. Shipments from the North African coun­try report­edly increased by 40 per­cent in the first ten months of the year, with aver­age prices at €3.50 per kilo­gram. In Bari, Italy’s main olive oil mar­ket, extra vir­gin olive oil is cur­rently traded at around €7 per kilo­gram. Coldiretti framed this trend as dump­ing and called for stricter ori­gin rules and rein­forced bor­der con­trols.

Coldiretti’s posi­tion is far from iso­lated. The olive oil millers of the national AIFO asso­ci­a­tion had warned last December of ongo­ing mas­sive olive oil imports and urged con­sumers to read labels on super­mar­ket bot­tles and look for the ​“100 per­cent Italian olive oil” des­ig­na­tion if they seek qual­ity.

Cane defended the robust­ness of Italy’s over­sight frame­work. ​“Controls work,” she said, stress­ing that Italy relies on ​“a national net­work unique in its kind, com­posed of eight com­pe­tent author­i­ties that mon­i­tor the prod­uct placed on the Italian mar­ket, both at the bor­ders and at the mill.” In this con­text, she high­lighted the key role of SIAN, ​“the national dig­i­tal sys­tem that mon­i­tors olive oil flows enter­ing and leav­ing Italy,” which guar­an­tees the con­stant trace­abil­ity of oils pro­duced or mar­keted in the coun­try.

Assitol has asked the European Commission to strengthen trace­abil­ity through a European mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem that ver­i­fies the entry and exit points for olive oil across the entire con­ti­nent. ​“In this way, trace­abil­ity will be guar­an­teed more strongly and effec­tively,” Cane said.

Asked how price dif­fer­en­tials affect pro­cure­ment in the main­stream retail mar­ket, Cane said that ​“every olive oil, every brand has its own iden­tity and must main­tain fla­vor, aro­mas and con­sis­tent qual­ity over time, so that con­sumers can always find the same prod­uct in the bot­tle.” She added that raw mate­r­ial selec­tion must ensure this con­ti­nu­ity ​“with­out obvi­ously neglect­ing eco­nomic dynam­ics, in order to remain com­pet­i­tive in con­sumer mar­kets.”

Despite its qual­i­ta­tive rep­u­ta­tion, cer­ti­fied olive oils remain mar­ginal in Italy’s retail land­scape and, in 2025, lost ground in vol­ume terms. According to retail data from Mark Up, after years of steady growth since 2019, both 100 per­cent Italian and PDO/PGI extra vir­gin olive oils declined in 2025 in favor of EU and non-EU blends.

PDO and PGI olive oils now account for just 2.2 per­cent of vol­umes, down from three per­cent in 2024, while 100 per­cent Italian stands at 19.7 per­cent com­pared with 31 per­cent the pre­vi­ous year. The share of EU and extra-EU olive oils on the Italian mar­ket rose from 76.9 per­cent in 2019 to 78.2 per­cent in 2025.

“By def­i­n­i­tion, PDOs and PGIs are ​‘lim­ited edi­tions,’ express­ing the soul of a ter­ri­tory and its his­tory. What con­sumers tend to notice, how­ever, are pri­mar­ily the higher costs, given the com­plete lack of effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion about these prod­ucts,” Cane said.

“We must not for­get that large-scale retail is the main sales chan­nel for extra vir­gin olive oil and that this cat­e­gory is not par­tic­u­larly val­ued there. In addi­tion, these olive oils are penal­ized by the cur­rent resur­gence of infla­tion, which is affect­ing Italians’ pur­chas­ing power,” she added.

In this con­text, the forth­com­ing National Olive Plan is seen as an oppor­tu­nity to mod­ern­ize orchards, intro­duce more resilient vari­eties and rein­force sus­tain­abil­ity. Cane also said struc­tural reform must be accom­pa­nied by stronger con­sumer edu­ca­tion, argu­ing that the entire sup­ply chain should ensure extra vir­gin olive oil is ​“told for what it truly is: an essen­tial food for our health,” link­ing agri­cul­tural resilience with cul­tural and nutri­tional aware­ness.