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The offi­cial start of the Greek olive sea­son found the price of olive oil at sat­is­fac­tory lev­els, but the pro­duc­tion out­put in decline lead­ing to lower con­sump­tion.

The ini­tial olive oil fore­casts pre­dicted that Greece, with an annual out­put exceed­ing 300,000 tons over the past two years, would expe­ri­ence a rel­a­tively reduced pro­duc­tion this year. The first esti­mates were talk­ing about an out­put rang­ing from 240,000 to 250,000 tons.

Experts are now pre­dict­ing that the annual olive oil out­put will drop even fur­ther. ​“We are expect­ing an annual out­put of roughly 200,000 tons and a decrease of 20 to 25 per­cent in aver­age con­sump­tion,” said Gior­gos Oikonomou, gen­eral direc­tor of the Greek Asso­ci­a­tion of Indus­tries and Proces­sors of Olive Oil (Sevi­tel), and exec­u­tive board mem­ber of the sci­en­tific, non-profit orga­ni­za­tion Filaios.
See more: Com­plete Cov­er­age of the 2016 Olive Har­vest
​“This is the direct result of var­i­ous rea­sons, the most impor­tant being the cli­mate con­di­tions, that is the extended heat and increased tem­per­a­tures of the pre­vi­ous months, and the olive fruit fly infes­ta­tions dur­ing flo­res­cence, par­tic­u­larly dur­ing Easter period,” Oikonomou told Olive Oil Times

“On the other hand, neigh­bor­ing olive oil giant and com­peti­tor Italy has suf­fered an even worse fly attack,” said Oikonomou. Indeed, inter­na­tional agen­cies fore­cast a plunge of 49 per­cent for Ital­ian annual olive oil pro­duc­tion as opposed to a 17-per­cent decline in the Greek one.

Gen­er­ally speak­ing, down­ward trends in olive oil pro­duc­tion are not restricted to Italy, or the Mediter­ranean basin alto­gether (for exam­ple, Por­tuguese annual pro­duc­tion is also expected to fall by 4 per­cent).

Europe’s olive oil sup­ply, which accounts for 78 per­cent of the global olive oil sup­ply, will shrink by 17 per­cent this year, and the whole world will see a decline of 14 per­cent in the Liq­uid Gold annual pro­duc­tion, at least in com­par­i­son with the amounts it enjoyed last year.

“In Greece, this dimin­ished out­put will cre­ate pres­sures in both the qual­ity and quan­tity of olive oil,” said Oikonomou. ​“Still, Greece clas­si­fies as a sur­plus coun­try, so the prob­lems are not insur­mount­able.”

“Greece is dis­tin­guished by her loyal client base, her loyal traders, as I pre­fer to call them, but the mar­ket is expand­ing. To put you in the pic­ture bet­ter, first only the Greek homogeny, for exam­ple the Greeks of Asto­ria, would buy exported Greek olive oil. Now, you can find our exports in large super­mar­ket chains unre­lated to the Greek dias­pora.”

Sevitel’s direc­tor stressed that the Greek olive oil mar­ket is leap­ing ahead steadily, and talked about the association’s plans to solid­ify stan­dard­iza­tion of Greek olive oil. Finally, he men­tioned that the sec­tor will take off if the state looks into the inter­na­tional olive oil cam­paign aspect more enthu­si­as­ti­cally among oth­ers, but also if Greek pro­duc­ers coor­di­nate their actions, fol­low­ing the foot­steps of coun­tries like Spain.

• Gior­gos Oikonomou