`Olive Oil Imports Down in North America and China - Olive Oil Times

Olive Oil Imports Down in North America and China

By Julie Butler
Dec. 10, 2013 15:30 UTC

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Imports of olive oil and olive pomace oil in the giant North American mar­ket fell six per­cent in the year to September, the lat­est mar­ket report from the International Olive Council shows.

Its first full-year fig­ures for the 2012/13 crop year — October 2012 to September 2013 — also reveal drops of 10 per­cent in Australia and 8 per­cent in China but growth of 18 per­cent in Japan, 8 per­cent in Russia and 5 per­cent in Brazil on the pre­vi­ous sea­son.

And imports into the European Union from non-EU coun­tries were up 61 per­cent and trade within the EU down 10 per­cent for the first eleven months of the crop year com­pared to the same period in the 2011/12 sea­son, a sit­u­a­tion the IOC said was obvi­ously linked to the low level of EU olive oil pro­duc­tion in 2012/2013.”

World table olive mar­ket

Table olive imports, mean­while, rose by 8 per­cent each in the US, Brazil and Russia and by 5 per­cent in Canada, while remain­ing at the same level in Australia com­pared to the pre­vi­ous sea­son. EU data to this September shows a rise of 2 per­cent in extra-EU/27 imports and of 3 per­cent in intra-EU-27 acqui­si­tions.

Ex-mill prices for extra vir­gin olive oil

Spain: The IOC’s November newslet­ter also says that the prices paid to pro­duc­ers in Spain in late November — around €2.30/kg — were 1 per­cent lower than the same time a sea­son ear­lier, as mar­kets reacted to the announce­ment of a good crop in the 2013/14 season…and the like­li­hood of olive oil stor­age being emp­tied as much as pos­si­ble to make way for new sea­son pro­duc­tion.”

Italy: Prices started to rise in the last week of October and reached €2.65/kg by the end of November, up by 2 per­cent on the same time the year before.

Greece: At the end of September, prices in Greece stood at about €2.50 but then dropped until lev­el­ing off for about four weeks at €2.36 in late October/November only to pick up to €2.41 in the last week of November. This price level is 15 per­cent higher than the same period a year ear­lier and prob­a­bly mir­rors the small crop expected for 2013/14,” the IOC said.

Refined olive oil prices

Prices for refined olive oil in Spain and Italy fell to €2.15/kg and €2.17/kg respec­tively, declines of of 5 per­cent and 9 per­cent on the same period a sea­son ago. No data was avail­able for Greece.

The dif­fer­ence between the price of refined olive oil and extra vir­gin olive oil lies at about €0.15/kg in Spain and €0.48/kg in Italy.

Virgin olive oil now dom­i­nates imports in Brazil

The newslet­ter also included a sec­tion on Brazil, where imports of olive oil and olive pomace oil grew five per­cent year-on-year to reach about 74,874t in 2012/13, of which Portugal pro­vided 57 per­cent, Spain 25 per­cent, Argentina 9 per­cent and Italy six per­cent.

The vast major­ity of these imports — 73 per­cent — was vir­gin grade olive oil, up from just 39 per­cent a decade ago. In 2002/03, 61 per­cent was of the olive oil grade (cus­toms head­ing 150990) but by last sea­son this had ebbed to 25 per­cent.

Argentina is by far the main source of Brazil’s table olive imports, though it has lost some ground to the next biggest sup­plier, Spain.

Source:

IOC November 2013 mar­ket newslet­ter

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