Italian Olive Oil Sector Demonstrates Resilience in New Report

Summary

Italian olive oil pro­duc­tion is declin­ing, with the 2024/25 crop year end­ing with 250,000 met­ric tons. Ismea reports a decrease in per capita olive oil con­sump­tion in Italy in 2024, with a shift towards cheaper options impact­ing the mar­ket. Despite chal­lenges, Italian olive oil exports grew in 2024, and the sec­tor is sup­ported by var­i­ous mea­sures to adapt to chang­ing con­di­tions and increase pro­duc­tion vol­umes.

The 2024/25 crop year is clos­ing with 250,000 met­ric tons of pro­duc­tion, as Italy’s olive oil yields con­tinue to fall — aver­ag­ing nine per­cent lower this decade com­pared to the last.

The lat­est fig­ures released by Ismea, the pub­lic agency for ser­vices to the agri­cul­tural mar­ket, also con­firmed that Italian per capita olive oil con­sump­tion declined in 2024, sig­nal­ing a chang­ing approach of many house­holds to the sta­ple prod­uct.

The Ismea report shows olive oil con­sump­tion decreas­ing in 2024 to 440,804 tons, com­pared with the 474,405 tons reported in 2023 and the 518,694 tons in 2022.

The data show that the aver­age Italian con­sumes about 7.5 liters of olive oil per annum. In 2019, per capita con­sump­tion reached 7.6 liters. Seven years before, con­sump­tion was at 12 liters per capita.

“Consumers often do not know the dif­fer­ence between one prod­uct and the other,” Anna Cane, pres­i­dent of the olive oil group at the Italian Association of the Edible Oil Industry (Assitol), told Olive Oil Times.

“Consumers tend to value sus­tain­abil­ity or qual­ity, but when those mean more expen­sive choices, most of them go for the cheaper option,” she added, hint­ing at the need for the whole sec­tor to bet­ter pro­mote the unique qual­i­ties of extra vir­gin olive oil among Italian con­sumers.

In the first months of 2025, Ismea is report­ing a growth of cheaper olive oil sales across the large food retail­ers, where dis­counts and spe­cial offers often dom­i­nate the scene.

In this con­text, extra vir­gin olive oil sales are grow­ing 24 per­cent in the first months of 2025 com­pared to the same period of 2024.

The report high­lighted how olive oil con­sump­tion in Italy has his­tor­i­cally been much larger than pro­duc­tion.

Together with the needs of large Italian exporters, this dif­fer­ence is one of the dri­vers behind the increase in olive oil imports in Italy.

Imports reached 446,000 tons in 2024, 2.3 per­cent more than the pre­vi­ous year. Their value was €3.131 bil­lion, 28 per­cent more than in 2023.

From January to April, imports grew 66 per­cent com­pared to the same period of 2024, exceed­ing 250,000 tons.

Interestingly, their value dropped 13 per­cent over the pre­vi­ous year as the inter­na­tional list­ings for olive oil also declined con­sid­er­ably.

According to Ismea, Italian olive oil pro­duc­ers are show­ing sig­nif­i­cant resilience despite recent chal­lenges fac­ing the sec­tor.

Italian olive oil exports in 2024 grew by 6.8 per­cent to 344,000 tons with a value exceed­ing €3.09 bil­lion, 43 per­cent more than in 2023.

Data for the start of 2025 fol­low a sim­i­lar trend: extra vir­gin olive oil sales from January to April 2025 reached 108,671 tons, 26 per­cent more than in the same period of 2024. Value decreased by 5.4 per­cent due to lower prices on the inter­na­tional mar­kets.

In 2024, olive oil exports rep­re­sented 4.5 per­cent of Italy’s total food exports.

According to Ismea, the sector’s resilience is also con­firmed by sev­eral sig­nif­i­cant indi­ca­tors.

Across the coun­try, there are cur­rently 620,000 reg­is­tered com­pa­nies involved in olive oil pro­duc­tion, with more than 4,200 active olive oil mills. There have not been sig­nif­i­cant vari­a­tions in most of the coun­try in recent years.

“[The pro­duc­tion drop] is linked to cli­mate fac­tors and alter­nate fruit-bear­ing sea­sons, but signs of recov­ery can already be seen,” the report’s authors wrote.

Fifty-eight per­cent of Italian olive farms man­age less than three hectares, with only 17 per­cent con­duct­ing groves between ten and 200 hectares.

Interestingly, the report sig­nals a grow­ing trend of olive orchard sizes in north­ern Italy. In con­trast, the south of the coun­try remains by far the most sig­nif­i­cant in terms of hectares and yields.

Ismea noted how in Piedmont between 2020 and 2024, olive farms expanded their sur­faces by 40 per­cent. Sixteen per­cent is reported for Friuli-Venezia Giulia and ten per­cent for other north­ern regions.

In south­ern Italy, the num­ber of olive groves fell by six per­cent in Campania and five per­cent in Puglia. Only Sicily increased olive cul­ti­va­tion, with the num­ber of hectares ris­ing by 20 per­cent.

Quality and the value of unique ter­roirs are increas­ingly dri­vers for Italian pro­duc­ers: extra vir­gin olive oil reg­is­tered under a geo­graph­i­cal indi­ca­tion rep­re­sented five per­cent of the Italian olive oil offer­ings in 2024, con­sol­i­dat­ing a grow­ing trend in recent years.

“Italian olive oil is a sym­bol of qual­ity, cul­ture and iden­tity. Performance in inter­na­tional mar­kets con­firms the sector’s abil­ity to gen­er­ate value and adapt, while main­tain­ing a strong con­nec­tion to the land and look­ing with con­fi­dence toward new chal­lenges,” Sergio Marchi, Ismea direc­tor gen­eral, said while pre­sent­ing the report.

Indeed, the report high­lights the grow­ing role played by organic olive farm­ing in Italy.

In 2024, 15 per­cent of the over­all olive oil pro­duc­tion was organic, com­ing from 279,000 hectares of organic olive groves and rep­re­sent­ing 24 per­cent of the country’s total olive-grow­ing area, which is increas­ing annu­ally.

The south­ern regions of Puglia, Calabria and Sicily, Italy’s most rel­e­vant olive grow­ing areas, are home to 72 per­cent of organic olive cul­ti­va­tion.

Ismea noted how to adapt to the chang­ing cli­mate and face the decline in yields, sev­eral mea­sures already sup­port the sec­tor.

The agency listed the €34.6 mil­lion fund pro­vided by the strate­gic plan for the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) 2023 – 2027, the €100 mil­lion directed to olive oil mill ren­o­va­tion, €30 mil­lion to cope with Xylella fas­tidiosa and other incen­tives and qual­ity improve­ment funds related to the CAP.

“A strate­gic pack­age that sup­ports the sec­tor in its tran­si­tion toward inno­v­a­tive, sus­tain­able, value‑oriented pro­duc­tion mod­els, with the goal of recov­er­ing new pro­duc­tion vol­umes,” the report authors con­cluded.