`Council Predicts Increase in World Olive Oil Demand - Olive Oil Times
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Council Predicts Increase in World Olive Oil Demand

By Julie Butler
Dec. 13, 2010 07:10 UTC

By Julie Butler
Olive Oil Times Contributor | Reporting from Barcelona

World olive oil con­sump­tion is expected to slightly exceed pro­duc­tion — by about 30,000 tons — in the 2010-11 crop year, which Spanish pro­duc­ers hope spells higher prices for them.

In its lat­est esti­mates, the International Olive Council pre­dicts that inter­na­tional con­sump­tion will rise 3.6%, to 2.97 mil­lion tons. Meanwhile, pro­duc­tion will drop 2.5 per­cent, to 2.94 mil­lion tons.

The biggest user of olive oil, the EU, is antic­i­pated to con­sume 1.8 mil­lion tons in 2010-11, up 2.7 % on the pro­vi­sional fig­ures for 2009-10. The US is fore­cast to
remain the sec­ond high­est, with con­sump­tion expected to rise just 0.7%, to 260,000 tons.

According to the IOC’s EU esti­mates, olive oil pro­duc­tion in world leader Spain will fall from nearly 1.4 mil­lion tons (2009 – 10 pro­vi­sional fig­ures), to just under 1.2 mil­lion tons in 2010-11, a decrease of about 14%. In con­trast, pro­duc­tion in Italy, the world’s sec­ond largest pro­ducer, is expected to increase by 4.3% next sea­son, to 480,000 tons, and Greece is tipped to rise 5%, to 336,000 tons.

Among non-EU coun­tries fore­cast to increase pro­duc­tion are Syria, to 193,500 tons (up 29%), Algeria, 48,000 tons (up 81%) and Israel, 9,000 tons (a hefty 157% jump). After slump­ing to just 5,500 tons in 2009-10, Palestine is expected to more than quadru­ple that pro­duc­tion to 24,000 tons.

Countries fac­ing decreased pro­duc­tion include Morocco, 150,000 tons (down 6.2%) and Tunisia, 120,000 tons (down 20%).

Commenting on the IOC’s expec­ta­tion of a decrease in Spain’s pro­duc­tion the next year, the Spanish Association of Olive Municipalities (AEMO) said in a state­ment that it augured well for an increase in the farm-gate price of olive oil. ​“Which would be a relief for olive grow­ers after two years of losses.”

The fig­ures were released by the IOC at its 98th ses­sion of the Council of Members, held in Madrid from November 22 – 26. They included the final bal­ances for the 2008-09 crop year, in which global olive oil con­sump­tion, 2.8 mil­lion tons, exceeded pro­duc­tion by 162,000 tons.

Also dis­cussed at the meet­ing were the IOC olive prod­ucts pro­mo­tional cam­paigns in China and Russia and an upcom­ing cam­paign in the United States and Canada, the pri­or­ity rank­ing for mar­ket research in Japan, South Korea and Australia in 2011, and IOC work on stan­dards for trade in olive prod­ucts.

The meet­ing approved a revi­sion of the trade stan­dard for olive oils and olive-pomace oils, and the adop­tion of new and revised test meth­ods, includ­ing the use of cap­il­lary col­umn gas chro­matog­ra­phy for the deter­mi­na­tion of the com­po­si­tion and con­tent of sterols and triter­pene dial­co­hols.

The Executive Secretariat was instructed to draw up the terms of ref­er­ence for an olive prop­a­ga­tion tech­niques project appli­ca­tion and to pro­vide an eval­u­a­tion of the world olive germplasm col­lec­tion in Marrakesh, Morocco.

The Council also decided to include Albania, Argentina, Montenegro and Turkey in RESGEN, a project aimed at iden­ti­fy­ing, describ­ing and con­serv­ing olive genetic resources and now cov­er­ing 17 coun­tries, and pre­viewed a revamp of the IOC web­site due to go live in January 2011.
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