Olive Oil Production In Uruguay Set to Rebound

After Uruguay recorded one of its worst-ever har­vests in 2020, pro­duc­tion is expected to bounce back in 2021.

A com­bi­na­tion of many pro­duc­ers enter­ing an off-year in the olive tree’s alter­nate bear­ing cycle and spring­time frosts dur­ing the flow­er­ing sea­son fol­lowed by an excep­tion­ally dry sum­mer caused pro­duc­tion to slump to just 295 tons in the 2019/20 crop year.

This year, the weather was more favor­able, and many pro­duc­ers entered an on-year. With the vast major­ity of pro­duc­ers fin­ish­ing their har­vests in late June, pre­lim­i­nary esti­mates sug­gest Uruguay could have its sec­ond-high­est pro­duc­tion total ever.

“Luckily, this year, the pro­duc­tion was a lot bet­ter than in 2020,” Martin Robaina, the pres­i­dent of the Uruguayan Olive Association (Asolur) and pro­ducer at Lote8, told Olive Oil Times. ​“It was not as good as that of 2019, where we had our record har­vest of 2,500 tons, but we will be close.”

Based on pre­lim­i­nary esti­mates and con­ver­sa­tions with pro­duc­ers, Robaina esti­mated pro­duc­tion will reach 1,900 tons of olive oil.

Along with a higher yield of olives, pro­duc­ers from around the coun­try reported excel­lent qual­ity lev­els. According to Robaina, the over­whelm­ing major­ity of Uruguayan olive oil pro­duc­tion is graded as ​“extra vir­gin.”

“The har­vest has been very good in Uruguay,” Gonzalo Aguirre, the co-owner of Olivares de Santa Laura, told Olive Oil Times. ​“We bet heav­ily on the early har­vest, which has been excel­lent. We pre­fer to sac­ri­fice quan­tity for qual­ity and are con­vinced that this is the way.”

However, the pro­ducer, who is based in the north­east­ern province of Cerro Largo, added that one of the main chal­lenges he faces is find­ing con­sumers to pur­chase his extra vir­gin olive oils. This has been exac­er­bated by the Covid-19 pan­demic, which led to the clo­sure of the bor­ders in 2020 and dra­mat­i­cally decreased tourism.

“Consumption of olive oil was affected in part by the clo­sure or reduc­tion of capac­ity in restau­rants and hotels,” he said. ​“At the same time con­sump­tion in fam­i­lies increased con­sid­er­ably, peo­ple had more time to cook at home.”

According to Robaina, edu­cat­ing con­sumers about the health ben­e­fits and organolep­tic prop­er­ties of extra vir­gin olive oil is one of the main chal­lenges fac­ing the entire sec­tor.

“We have to con­tinue try­ing to edu­cate Uruguayan con­sumers so that they know how to rec­og­nize what a good extra vir­gin olive oil is and opt for extra vir­gin oils from Uruguay,” he said.

On the oppo­site end of the coun­try from Olivares de Santa Laura, the pro­duc­ers behind O’33 told Olive Oil Times that they too had enjoyed a fruit­ful har­vest.

“It was a long har­vest,” Natalia Welker, the com­pany owner, told Olive Oil Times. ​“2021 was a har­vest with a lot of fruit… Regarding the qual­ity, it is excel­lent.”

While rural areas of Uruguay have been much less directly affected by the pan­demic, Welker said that the com­pany had com­plied with all pro­to­cols and suc­cess­fully man­aged the har­vest with­out sig­nif­i­cant inci­dents.

However, she said that dif­fi­culty import­ing goods – which has been exac­er­bated by the pan­demic glob­ally – is one of the main chal­lenges fac­ing her busi­ness.

“We import sup­plies such as bot­tles and caps, and sup­pli­ers take a long time to meet our needs,” she said.

Just up the road from O’33, the pro­duc­ers behind Agroland S.A., which bot­tles its olive oil under the Colinas de Garzón brand and earned a Gold Award at the 2021 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, also reported an excel­lent har­vest.

“It was a very good year, not a record like 2019, but a very good one,” Víctor Rodríguez, the company’s olive oil pro­duc­tion man­ager, told Olive Oil Times.

Just like the other pro­ducer, the Covid-19 pan­demic cre­ated plenty of stress for Rodríguez and his team but did not lead to any inter­rup­tions to the har­vest. However, for the agron­o­mist behind Uruguay’s sec­ond-largest pro­ducer, the country’s humid weather remains the biggest chal­lenge.

“The other great chal­lenge that we face year after year is the cli­mate of Uruguay, which is very humid,” he said. ​“This means that we are always mon­i­tor­ing the health of our plants. In addi­tion to this, we opt for an early har­vest, for two rea­sons, one for health and the other for the qual­ity of our prod­ucts.”

All the pro­duc­ers inter­viewed for this arti­cle said that they expect pro­duc­tion to decrease once again in 2022 as a result of pro­duc­ers once again enter­ing an off-year.

Robaina said one of the main projects of Asolur is to mit­i­gate the impacts of this nat­ural phe­nom­e­non on the trees and have Uruguayan pro­duc­ers achieve more con­sis­tent har­vests year in and year out.

“We are try­ing to inves­ti­gate and to be able to have field man­age­ment that means that we do not have those dif­fer­ences in pro­duc­tion because that, of course, makes the activ­ity dif­fi­cult to sus­tain,” he said. ​“The idea is to try to reduce this phe­nom­e­non so that the pro­ducer has fruit to har­vest every year.”