`Tunisia Has a Moment as Top Olive Oil Exporter - Olive Oil Times

Tunisia Has a Moment as Top Olive Oil Exporter

By Isabel Putinja
Oct. 13, 2015 12:01 UTC

Tunisia exported more olive oil than any other coun­try for the 2014/2015 sea­son, over­tak­ing Spain, accord­ing to sta­tis­tics released by the Tunisian Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy.

Olive oil exports reached 299,300 tons — three times the pre­vi­ous year’s out­put and more than 10 per­cent of global olive oil con­sump­tion — fetch­ing a record 1.9 bil­lion Tunisian dinars ($976 mil­lion).

While Spain and Italy expe­ri­enced the worst har­vests in years last sea­son due to bad weather and infes­ta­tions of Xylella fas­tidiosa, the 2014/15 har­vest in Tunisia was a record-breaker

Tunisia’s olive oil exports to Spain increas­ing twelve-fold, and by 336 per­cent to Italy, with the two EU coun­tries tra­di­tion­ally being Tunisia’s largest cus­tomers.

Such growth in export fig­ures was made pos­si­ble in part by the weak demand at home, as Tunisians them­selves have been turn­ing more to seed oils in recent years.

For the upcom­ing 2015/2016 Tunisian olive oil har­vest, pro­duc­tion is expected to be back down to about 140,000 tons.

Olive oil exports rep­re­sent 40 per­cent of the country’s agri­cul­tural exports and 10 per­cent of total exports.

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