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According to the head of the olive oil sec­tor at the European Commission, the final pro­duc­tion and trade fig­ures from the European Union for the 2020/21 crop year con­firm a grow­ing trend.

Gabriel Vigil told a meet­ing of the International Olive Council that exports, which reached 634,000 tons in 2020/21, are des­tined to accel­er­ate. He added that the E.U. pro­duced 2.05 tons of olive oil in the pre­vi­ous crop year.

According to the lat­est E.U. esti­mates, the inter­na­tional olive oil trade will not stop grow­ing until at least 2030.

E.U. experts said olive oil exports will grow both in exist­ing mar­kets and new ones due to the grow­ing pop­u­lar­ity of extra vir­gin olive oil and the Mediterranean diet. Between 2022 and 2030, E.U. olive oil exports are esti­mated to exceed one mil­lion tons, nearly 40 per­cent above the rolling five-year aver­age (717,900 tons).

While speak­ing at the IOC con­fer­ence in Tbilisi, Georgia, Vigil explained how the growth of olive oil imports in the E.U. will flat­ten from the next sea­son on while pro­duc­tion should reach almost 2.5 mil­lion tons by 2030.

Vigil noted that less than six mil­lion hectares within the E.U. are devoted to olive grow­ing, and this fig­ure was unlikely to increase much in the com­ing years.

He attrib­uted this to com­pe­ti­tion com­ing from other crops and the chal­lenges related to water avail­abil­ity. Still, Vigil added, the share of irri­gated olive groves is increas­ing steadily, con­firm­ing the grow­ing rel­e­vance of high-den­sity and super-high-den­sity olive groves in the future of pro­duc­tion.

As the trend toward mod­ern olive grow­ing con­tin­ues, olive grow­ing in the E.U. is expected to be increas­ingly organic with the abil­ity to antic­i­pate the har­vest and cur­tail pests and pathogens while increas­ing qual­ity.

Spain and Italy are expected to remain the most rel­e­vant pro­duc­ing coun­tries in the E.U., but Vigil added that Portugal is expected to see the largest pro­duc­tion increases, a rise of three per­cent by 2030 com­pared with 2019.

While the E.U. is expected to deliver 2.92 mil­lion of the 3.11 mil­lion tons of olive oil expected to be pro­duced glob­ally in 2021/22, the 27-mem­ber state is also see­ing its olive oil con­sump­tion slow

According to Vigil, con­sump­tion dropped from 1.79 mil­lion tons in 2011/12 to the 1.46 mil­lion tons fore­casted for the cur­rent sea­son.

He warned that the future of the global olive oil trade is con­nected to the abil­ity of the sec­tor to over­come seri­ous chal­lenges such as cli­mate change and the grow­ing role of non‑E.U. olive oil pro­duc­ers, includ­ing Tunisia, Egypt and Turkey.

However, Vigil con­cluded that oppor­tu­ni­ties lie in chang­ing global con­sumer behav­ior, which is increas­ingly favor­able to olive oil.

• International Olive Council
• International Olive Council