Two Greek PDO Olive Oils Receive Protection in India

Two Greek extra vir­gin olive oils with Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) cer­ti­fi­ca­tions from the European Union, Sitia Lasithiou Kritis and Kalamata, have been granted pro­tected sta­tus in India after being rec­og­nized as geo­graph­i­cal indi­ca­tions (GI) by the gov­ern­ment.

The res­o­lu­tion was pub­lished in the Journal of Geographical Indications of the Intellectual Property Organization of India on October 31^st.

Kalamata PDO olive oil is pro­duced in the Messinia region in south­west­ern Peloponnese mainly from olives of the Koroneiki or the Mastoeidis vari­ety (also known as Athinolia or Tsounati).

Sitia Lasithiou Kritis PDO is extra vir­gin olive oil pro­duced in the province of Sitia in east­ern Crete exclu­sively from Koroneiki olives.

The two Greek olive oils are now pro­tected from imi­ta­tions and mis­use of their names in the vast Indian mar­ket, while GI recog­ni­tion can also serve as an impor­tant mar­ket­ing tool.

The approval of the two olive oils as GIs in the South Asian coun­try, which took more than ten years to com­plete, resulted from for­mal appli­ca­tions by the Messinia Union of Agricultural Associations and the Sitia Union of Agricultural Cooperatives.

“India is another major mar­ket where the union man­aged, after a long and demand­ing process, to pro­tect its Kalamata PDO extra vir­gin olive oil against coun­ter­feit­ing,” the Messinia Union said in an announce­ment.

“This pro­tec­tion sta­tus is of par­tic­u­lar impor­tance since the Indian mar­ket will be a tar­get for Greek exports in the future,” the announce­ment added. ​“It is, there­fore, a win­dow to the future.”

The union also noted that it will seek pro­tec­tion in India for the Kalamata PDO table olives.

Both Sitita PDO and Kalamata PDO olive oils are among the four Greek olive oils that have been granted inter­na­tional intel­lec­tual prop­erty pro­tec­tion in 56 coun­tries after being reg­is­tered with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

Consumers world­wide are increas­ingly inter­ested in agri­cul­tural prod­ucts and foods with spe­cific char­ac­ter­is­tics and dif­fer­ent geo­graph­i­cal ori­gins. At a global level, there are more than 10,000 pro­tected GIs.

Regarding the pen­e­tra­tion of olive oil in the world’s most pop­u­lous coun­try, India is still largely a vir­gin mar­ket; in 2022, the coun­try imported around 13,400 tons of extra vir­gin and pomace olive oil, mainly from Spain and Italy.

However, as else­where, the rise in global olive oil prices is adversely impact­ing the coun­try’s con­sump­tion of extra vir­gin olive oil.

“We have reduced imports of extra vir­gin olive oil by 30 per­cent and almost dou­bled imports of pomace [olive oil],” Dhiraj Dama, the man­ag­ing direc­tor at MRK Foods, a food sup­plier from Mumbai, told the Times of India.

According to Rahul Upadhyay, head of the Indian Olive Association (IOA), import­ing olive oil in India is becom­ing increas­ingly expen­sive.

“Not only have the prices at source dou­bled over the last year, but the Euro has also appre­ci­ated by 12 to 13 per­cent, and we are still pay­ing a 40 to 45 per­cent import duty for this higher price,” he said.

Upadhyay added that the asso­ci­a­tion has called on the Indian gov­ern­ment to reduce taxes on imported olive oil.

• Agrotypos
• Intellectual Propery India Journal
• The Times of India