Moroccan Olive Growers Hope for Record Harvest and Exports

Summary

Favorable weather pat­terns are expected to lead to a record olive pro­duc­tion in Morocco, with esti­mates sug­gest­ing a poten­tial har­vest of two mil­lion tons of olives and 200,000 tons of olive oil. The sur­plus of olive oil may lead to increased exports to for­eign mar­kets, par­tic­u­larly the United States, where Moroccan olive oil faces lower tar­iffs com­pared to European and Tunisian prod­ucts.

Favorable weather pat­terns dur­ing the most sig­nif­i­cant times of the olive sea­son are bring­ing new hope to Moroccan olive grow­ers.

The cur­rent esti­mates for the new olive har­vest and olive oil cam­paign are more than opti­mistic. Local experts, insti­tu­tions and asso­ci­a­tions see the poten­tial for a record olive pro­duc­tion in the coun­try.
​“Morocco is poised to swiftly reclaim, and even exceed, its record olive oil pro­duc­tion lev­els,” Ghizlane Tazi, gen­eral man­ager of the multi-awarded Moroccan olive oil pro­ducer Noor Fès, told Olive Oil Times.

“This momen­tum is fueled by expand­ing plan­ta­tions, recent invest­ments in state-of-the-art milling facil­i­ties, the surg­ing demand from inter­na­tional mar­kets and the favor­able weather con­di­tions of 2025,” she added.

The Moroccan Federation of Olive Production esti­mated a poten­tial of two mil­lion tons of olives to be har­vested in the 2025/2026 cam­paign, com­pared to the 950,000 tons har­vested in the pre­vi­ous sea­son.

Given the rain­fall in March and April, it is believed that such a har­vest could yield up to 200,000 tons of olive oil.

According to fig­ures released by the International Olive Council (IOC), Morocco’s har­vest reached a record 190,000 tons of olive oil in 2021/2022.

Average vol­umes almost halved in the fol­low­ing years, pri­mar­ily due to per­sis­tent drought con­di­tions in the coun­try.

Morocco’s Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch announced that the boun­ti­ful sea­son is expected to ease olive oil avail­abil­ity on the local mar­ket pri­mar­ily.

The impact of an expected opti­mal yield and increased avail­abil­ity of olive oil from for­eign mar­kets is already fuel­ing a con­sid­er­able drop in the prices of local prod­ucts.

According to the Moroccan Interprofessional, prices in some areas are already halv­ing from the record prices of 120 dirhams per liter (€11.31), with expec­ta­tions for a fur­ther drop.

A local reseller of olive oil, Mohammed Chouibat, told the local Hespress news that good olive yields are expected across all regions of the coun­try, with esti­mates pre­dict­ing prices to drop to 40 dirhams per liter.

“There is a very sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence between the last sea­son and the cam­paign that is open­ing now,” said Rachid Benali, pres­i­dent of the Moroccan Federation of Olive Production.

According to Benali, among the rea­sons for the surge in expected yields are the impacts of the Green Morocco national plan, which places the devel­op­ment of mod­ern and irri­gated olive farm­ing at the heart of the national agri­cul­tural strat­egy.

Regarding the prices of olive oil that Moroccan con­sumers will face, Benali expressed opti­mism, albeit with some cau­tion.

“The price of a liter of olive oil will not exceed 52 dirhams,” Benali noted, warn­ing that weather pat­terns will play a cru­cial role in the com­ing weeks and dur­ing har­vest.

Benali acknowl­edged how irri­ga­tion restric­tions due to scarce water avail­abil­ity affected some farm­ing areas, but noted the resilience shown by mod­ern olive groves planted in recent years.

Hamid Sabry, pres­i­dent of the Moroccan olive oil pro­duc­ers asso­ci­a­tion, said that mod­ern olive farms are expected to yield up to 40 tons of olives per hectare, a vol­ume that he deemed ​“his­toric.”

Local experts noted that these vol­umes of olives will put stress on olive oil mills that are not yet pre­pared to man­age such yields.

Those mills that have already ben­e­fited from the ongo­ing national efforts to increase olive pro­duc­tion and adopt new tech­nolo­gies and machin­ery will be in a bet­ter posi­tion.

Should the expected yields be con­firmed, Moroccan pro­duc­ers may end up with a sub­stan­tial sur­plus of prod­uct, exceed­ing the needs of the inter­nal mar­ket by far, as inter­nal con­sump­tion is esti­mated at approx­i­mately 140,000 tons of olive oil annu­ally.

This is why sev­eral local com­pa­nies are explor­ing new avenues of trade in for­eign mar­kets, pri­mar­ily the United States. U.S. tar­iffs are con­sid­ered favor­able to the country’s exports.

World Bank data show that from 2020 to 2024, U.S. imports of Moroccan vir­gin olive oil fluc­tu­ated between 1,500 tonnes in 2023 and about 4,500 thou­sand tonnes in 2020, with about 3,800 thou­sand tonnes in 2024.

The trade tar­iffs imposed by the Trump admin­is­tra­tion on olive oil imports from Europe (15 per­cent) are higher than those to which Moroccan olive oil will be sub­jected (10 per­cent).

Furthermore, a major olive oil pro­ducer in the area, Tunisia, will be sub­ject to tar­iffs between 20 and 28 per­cent, a sce­nario that could favor Moroccan exporters tar­get­ing the North American mar­ket.

According to exporters, a higher qual­ity of the national prod­uct will also be of inter­est for E.U. olive pro­duc­ers, which fig­ure among the largest pro­duc­ers as well as among the most sig­nif­i­cant importers.

Exports from Moroccan high-qual­ity olive oil pro­duc­ers will also be favor­ably impacted.

“Noor Fès is step­ping into the new sea­son with con­fi­dence. Looking ahead to promis­ing vol­umes,” Tazi com­mented.