Catalonia Expects Significant Increase in Olive Oil Production

Summary

Olive oil pro­duc­tion in Catalonia, Spain’s fourth most sig­nif­i­cant pro­duc­ing region, is expected to dou­ble in the 2025/26 crop year, with the region expected to pro­duce 35,500 met­ric tons of olive oil. Producers are opti­mistic about the increase in pro­duc­tion due to favor­able weather con­di­tions, although chal­lenges such as lack of irri­ga­tion and mar­ket con­di­tions per­sist.

Olive oil pro­duc­tion in Spain’s fourth most sig­nif­i­cant pro­duc­ing region is expected to dou­ble in the 2025/26 crop year.

According to the Federation of Agricultural Cooperatives of Catalonia, the region is expected to pro­duce 35,500 met­ric tons of olive oil, a sig­nif­i­cant increase from the 15,350 tons pro­duced in the pre­vi­ous har­vest.

Before the sig­nif­i­cant pro­duc­tion drops of 2023/24 and 2024/25, Catalonia pro­duced about 30,000 tons annu­ally.

“The rains of recent months, which facil­i­tated flow­er­ing and ripen­ing, also favored an improve­ment in pro­duc­tion, espe­cially in rain­fed olive groves,” said Antoni Galceran, the federation’s head of olive oil. ​“It remains to be seen whether yields also improve, after a bad year in this regard.”

Tarragona, the lead­ing pro­duc­ing province in Catalonia, is expected to see the most sig­nif­i­cant increases, with yields ris­ing from 5,700 tons in 2024/25 to 24,000 tons for the cur­rent har­vest.

The coun­ties of Baix Ebre and Montsià, where the most sig­nif­i­cant pro­duc­tion in the autonomous com­mu­nity is located, were expected to have a ​“nor­mal” har­vest. Production was also expected ot increase in the province’s other five coun­ties.

However, extreme weather in Montsià also has pro­duc­ers wor­ried, with reports of hail in recent weeks knock­ing olives to the ground and dam­ag­ing branches.

More mod­est increases are also antic­i­pated in Lleida, from 8,500 to 10,000 tons and in the coastal regions of Barcelona and Girona, increas­ing from 1,150 to 1,500 tons.

In Lleida, the pro­duc­ers at Torres Import said they are expect­ing an improved har­vest from pre­vi­ous years.

“The long-awaited rains in 2024 have helped restore the bal­ance of the olive groves, and a good har­vest is expected this sea­son,” said Magda Martí Vargas, the company’s com­mer­cial man­ager.

“The change in the olive groves is sig­nif­i­cant,” she added. ​“The trees have good veg­e­ta­tion, and the flow­er­ing was splen­did in May. Currently, the ear­li­est vari­eties on the estate are already verai­son, and the later ones are begin­ning to bloom.”

Looking ahead, Martí said tim­ing the har­vest to pick the fruit at their opti­mal stage of ripeness while avoid­ing the late autumn rain will be the most sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge.

In the longer term, she added that find­ing enough qual­i­fied employ­ees to work in the groves year-round con­tin­ues to be a chal­lenge.

“Farm work is costly,” she said. ​“Tasks such as prun­ing and olive har­vest­ing are done man­u­ally on the farm. It’s increas­ingly dif­fi­cult to find peo­ple with tech­ni­cal knowl­edge and a pas­sion for work­ing in the fields.”

Farther west in Lleida’s Garrigues county, the 2025/26 har­vest is under­way at Oli Cometes. The award-win­ning pro­ducer antic­i­pates an increase in pro­duc­tion com­pared to 2024/25 and 2023/24.

“This year, we have not suf­fered the severe drought that we have been expe­ri­enc­ing for the past two years, so in terms of the quan­tity of olive fruit from the trees and the yield in the first days of milling, the cam­paign is expected to be bet­ter than last year,” co-owner Anna Canal said.

Due to the ​“severe drought” that plagued Catalonia over the past two years, Oli Cometes saw pro­duc­tion fall by two-thirds com­pared to nor­mal yields.

“However, we prob­a­bly won’t reach the aver­age from years before the drought,” she added.

This year, Canal said the company’s olive grove was full of fruit, with the team har­vest­ing more kilo­grams than the pre­vi­ous har­vest and enjoy­ing 15 per­cent fat yields in their green Arbequina olives.

However, Oli Cometes’s olive groves are not irri­gated, so Canal said that since extreme heat and no rain in August inter­rupted the rel­a­tively mild start to sum­mer, the olives are matur­ing quickly.

“This means that if it rains in the com­ing days and weeks, the olives will fall, and part of the har­vest will be lost,” she said.

Overall, Canal high­lighted the lack of irri­ga­tion in Catalonia as a chal­lenge and an oppor­tu­nity.

“The clear­est oppor­tu­nity we have in our area is irri­ga­tion,” she said. ​“Irrigation has been planned for our area for 22 years.”

However, Canal said the com­pany meant to install the new sys­tems in the province is well behind sched­ule, with no cer­tainty about when the work will be com­pleted.

“Water is not only essen­tial for the plants and trees in this area, but also for the pop­u­la­tion,” she said. ​“We are in an eco­nom­i­cally depressed area, and irri­ga­tion water is the only option for crops to thrive and there­fore the only option for the region’s inhab­i­tants to sur­vive and avoid migrat­ing to the big cities.”

Gerard Camps, the direc­tor of Gaudea, also located in Garrigues, echoed this sen­ti­ment.

“There are areas of Catalonia that were his­tor­i­cally rain­fed and will be able to be irri­gated in the com­ing years,” he said. ​“This rep­re­sents an oppor­tu­nity for the sec­tor to gain pro­duc­tiv­ity and sta­bil­ity.”

According to Camps, the award-win­ning pro­ducer fore­casts a 30 per­cent pro­duc­tion increase this sea­son.

“Production in kilo­grams is sim­i­lar, but we have a three to four per­cent­age point increase in yield com­pared to last year,” he said.

While the lack of water and heat­waves are the main chal­lenges fac­ing pro­duc­ers in Catalonia, Camps added, ​“we believe the only thing that could spoil the har­vest is an early frost.”

Other pro­duc­ers are look­ing for­ward to sig­nif­i­cant har­vest rebounds in dif­fer­ent parts of Catalonia.

“If we fol­low the esti­mates and look at our olive groves, we could reach 35,000 kilo­grams of oil,” said David Ribas, the head of qual­ity and food secu­rity at Finca La Gramamosa.

“Indeed, this year’s har­vest has increased sig­nif­i­cantly,” he added. ​“Our olive grove in Barcelona will be the same as last year’s, but our olive grove in Tarragona has dou­bled our pro­duc­tion.”

Ribas attrib­uted the pro­duc­tion increase to the plen­ti­ful rain at the begin­ning of the year and the agri­cul­tural best prac­tices fol­lowed by the com­pany through­out the sea­son.

Instead of agro­nomic fac­tors, he cited olive oil mar­ket con­di­tions as the most sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge fac­ing pro­duc­ers in Catalonia, but noted that focus­ing on the region’s most well-known endemic olive vari­ety presents a poten­tial solu­tion.

“The cur­rent chal­lenges for extra vir­gin olive oil are price fluc­tu­a­tions, new con­sumers and our abil­ity to gen­er­ate new prod­uct pro­files to add more sales niches where they already exist,” he said.

“Our flag­ship vari­ety is the Arbequina, which is chal­leng­ing to har­vest but very reward­ing, and it is gain­ing many fol­low­ers in Spain,” Ribas con­cluded. ​“This vari­ety could be the foun­da­tion for what may come in the com­ing years, a new crop in a new plant­ing frame­work.”

• Federation of Agricultural Cooperatives of Catalonia