`Olive Council Deputy Director Urges Producers to Improve Quality - Olive Oil Times

Olive Council Deputy Director Urges Producers to Improve Quality

By Julie Butler
Sep. 28, 2011 14:00 UTC


The deputy direc­tor of the International Olive Council (IOC), Ammir Assabah (cen­ter), spoke Tuesday at the open­ing of an olive oil tast­ing course at the University of Jaén with Vice-Chancellor for Internationalisation Maria Victoria Lopez Ramon (right)

Spain’s olive oil pro­duc­ers need to adapt pro­duc­tion to reflect the real­ity of world­wide demand – or face fur­ther losses, warns International Olive Oil Council deputy direc­tor Ammir Assabah.

The sit­u­a­tion is not easy, unfor­tu­nately not just for Spain but for many other coun­tries too,” Assabah told reporters. Many coun­tries have stocks and find them­selves in a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion. The impor­tant thing is to cre­ate value-added, par­tic­u­larly to improve prod­uct qual­ity, to gain mar­ket posi­tion­ing and to make adjust­ments so that sup­ply matches demand. These are mea­sures coun­tries can take in the light of the data released by the IOC.”

Assabah was speak­ing in Jaén on Tuesday at the open­ing of a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion course for EVOO tasters. Appointed deputy direc­tor in March, Assabah has a degree in agron­omy and a PhD in Rural Economics from the University of Montpellier in France, and is of Algerian nation­al­ity.

According to fore­casts in the IOC’s August newslet­ter, global olive oil pro­duc­tion is set to increase again for the 2011/12 crop year. Spain expects to pro­duce 1.4 mil­lion tons, up 2 per­cent on last sea­son, fol­lowed by Greece with 310,000 tons, up three per­cent.

Meanwhile, extra vir­gin olive oil prices have fallen 4 per­cent in Spain (€1.89/kg), held steady in Greece (€2.04/kg) and climbed 35 per­cent in Italy (€3.57/kg), com­pared to the same period a year ago.

Amid a pro­longed pric­ing cri­sis, Spain is await­ing an answer from the European Commission on its call for the intro­duc­tion of pri­vate stor­age aid and is also anx­ious about the out­come of the cur­rent rene­go­ti­a­tion of E.U. Agricultural sub­si­dies.

Olive oil con­sump­tion is falling in Spain as house­holds tighten their belts amid the finan­cial cri­sis.

Listen to an excerpt of the inter­view with Deputy Director Assabah (in French and Spanish): [audio: /wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Curso-experto-cata-aceite-director-COI.mp3]
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