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The world eats more table olives.

Accord­ing to the lat­est infor­ma­tion from the Inter­na­tional Olive Coun­cil (IOC), global con­sump­tion of olives has increased by 182 per­cent since 1990.

Most of the rise has occurred within the Mediter­ranean region where pro­duc­tion has fol­lowed demand. Egypt, Alge­ria, and Turkey over the period went from con­sum­ing 11,000, 14,000 and 110,000 tons to 400,000, 244,000 and 350,000 tons respec­tively.

In the Euro­pean Union, con­sump­tion over the same period rose by 78 per­cent, going from 346,500 to 618,000 tons. Spain, the largest Euro­pean pro­ducer, was also the main con­sumer per capita at 4.1 kg, fol­lowed by Cyprus with 3.1 kg, and Malta with 1.9kg.

Olive Oil Con­sump­tion Up in Key Mar­kets

There was some good news for the inter­na­tional sales of olive oil and olive pomace oil in the IOC num­bers per­tain­ing to the 2016/17 crop year. In the first two months (Octo­ber and Novem­ber 2016) con­sump­tion of olive oil and olive pomace oil rose in China (99 per­cent), Aus­tralia (65 per­cent), Canada (42 per­cent), Japan (17 per­cent), Brazil (16 per­cent) and the United States (5 per­cent) com­pared to the same period a year ear­lier.

Intra-EU acqui­si­tions rose by 24 per­cent in Octo­ber 2016, but extra-EU imports fell by 56 per­cent com­pared to Octo­ber 2016.

Olive Oil Prices

Span­ish prices reached €3.64/kg at the end of Jan­u­ary 2017, a 10 per­cent increase com­pared to Jan­u­ary 2016.

Ital­ian pro­ducer prices started pick­ing up in mid-August, accel­er­ated in the first week of Novem­ber and reached €5.90/kg at the end of Jan­u­ary 2017 (a 70 per­cent year-over-year increase).

Greek pro­ducer prices remained steady from mid-August through the end of Octo­ber and went up near the end of Jan­u­ary 2017 when they reached €3.46/kg (a 17 per­cent increase com­pared to Jan­u­ary 2016).

The same trend was observed for refined olive oil prices in Spain and Italy. At the end of Jan­u­ary 2017, the price dif­fer­ence in Spain between refined and vir­gin olive oil was €0.10/kg. In Italy, the price dif­fer­ence between the two cat­e­gories was far greater, at €2.28/kg.

Health Ben­e­fits Reported

Table olives were found to boost the immune sys­tem and, the IOC said, just might be the per­fect fer­mented pro­bi­otic veg­etable prod­uct of the future. This is due to the fact that some of the lac­tic acid bac­te­ria gen­er­ated in the fer­men­ta­tion of table olives fared bet­ter than other forms of bac­te­ria widely rec­og­nized as pro­bi­otic microor­gan­isms.

The reg­u­lar con­sump­tion of olives helps pro­vide the daily rec­om­mended intake of fiber, and olives are a source of oleic acid, car­bo­hy­drates, and pro­tein. Olives were also found to con­tain vital min­er­als such as sodium, iron, cal­cium and mag­ne­sium, and the antiox­i­dant prop­er­ties of polyphe­nols and provi­t­a­mins A and E.

• IOC Jan­u­ary 2017 Newslet­ter