`European Imports of Olive Oil Sharply Higher in Latest Report - Olive Oil Times
enEnglish
enEnglishfrFrançaiselελληνικάdeDeutscheitItalianozh-CN中文ptPortuguêsesEspañoltrTürkçehrHrvatskija日本語hiहिंदी
enEnglish
enEnglishfrFrançaiselελληνικάdeDeutscheitItalianozh-CN中文ptPortuguêsesEspañoltrTürkçehrHrvatskija日本語hiहिंदी

European Imports of Olive Oil Sharply Higher in Latest Report

By Julie Butler
Jun. 14, 2011 12:01 UTC

Imports of olive oil into the European Union were up 27 per­cent in the five months to February, accord­ing to the International Olive Council’s May Market Newsletter, released today.

However, since November – well before the March 11 tsunami – imports into Japan have been lower every month than the year before, reach­ing a cumu­la­tive fall of 10 per­cent.

The newslet­ter high­lights that com­bined imports by Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, the USA and the EU in the first five months of 2010/11 were up 120,386 tons, or 22 per­cent more than the same period the sea­son before.

Individual import increases for the six months to March com­pared with the same period a year ago were for Australia 2 per­cent, Brazil 19 per­cent, Canada 17 per­cent, and the USA – which in March alone imported 31,727 tons – was up 17 per­cent.

Meanwhile, pro­ducer prices for extra vir­gin olive oil have soared 45 per­cent in Italy, to €3.90/kg ($5.60/kg), com­pared with last year, but are down 4 per­cent in Spain (€1.98/kg) and 5 per­cent in Greece (€2.04/kg).

“Prices have recorded a very steep increase in Italy in recent weeks, con­trast­ing with the drop in Spain, although they now appear to be lev­el­ing off at around €3.90/kg. This con­firms the grow­ing dis­tance between the prices paid to pro­duc­ers in Italy and those paid in Spain and Greece,” the IOC said in the newslet­ter.

As for refined olive oil, prices have slipped in both Spain (2 per­cent) and Italy (4 per­cent). No data was avail­able for Greece.

“The very mild price recov­ery that began in August 2010 con­tin­ued through to mid-December, since when the trend seems to have reversed. The bulk of this recov­ery appears to have been lost although there have con­tin­ued to be minor price fluc­tu­a­tions since the sum­mer. Unlike the price of extra vir­gin olive oil, the price com­manded by refined olive oil dif­fers very lit­tle (0.14%) between Italy and Spain,” the IOC said.

The newslet­ter focused on Turkey, which will host the IOC’s 17th extra­or­di­nary ses­sion in Istanbul, from June 27 to July 1. Turkey rejoined the IOC just over a year ago and has stated its ambi­tion to move from being the world’s sixth to its sec­ond biggest pro­ducer, after Spain.

For 2010/11 Turkey expects an out­put of 160,000 tons but hopes to nearly dou­ble this – to 300,000 tons – in the next five years. In 2009/10, Turkey exported 29,500 tons of olive oil, mainly to the EU27, USA, Saudi Arabia and Japan, in descend­ing order of vol­ume.

Olive oil accounts for just nine per­cent of Turkey’s total veg­etable oil con­sump­tion, a low level attrib­uted to poor con­sumer aware­ness of its health ben­e­fits. Per capita olive oil con­sump­tion was 1.4kg in 2010 but is fore­cast to rise to 5kg by 2015.


More articles on:  , ,

Advertisement
Advertisement

Related Articles