Rising Prices Accompany Off-Year Harvest in Australia

Labor shortages, climate hiccups, insects and even parrots have impacted smaller growers across Australia. Meanwhile, prices for imported oils rise to unprecedented levels.

As olive oil production in Australia declined, prices reached unprecedented highs. (Photo: Oasis Olives)
By Paolo DeAndreis
Oct. 1, 2024 13:38 UTC
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As olive oil production in Australia declined, prices reached unprecedented highs. (Photo: Oasis Olives)

Extra vir­gin olive oil prices in Australia have surged to unprece­dented lev­els recently.

A visit to Melbourne super­mar­ket shelves revealed that medium-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil can now cost more than 25 Australian dol­lars (€15) per liter.

In recent months, the price of imported extra vir­gin olive oil has sig­nif­i­cantly sur­passed prices for Australian-made prod­ucts, revers­ing a long-stand­ing mar­ket trend.

See Also:2024 Harvest Updates

However, there are indi­ca­tions that these ris­ing price trends may soon taper off, includ­ing a favor­able yield for most Australian olive oil pro­duc­ers in the recent har­vest and an antic­i­pated recov­ery in European olive oil pro­duc­tion for the upcom­ing sea­son.

The har­vest was near what was expected,” Michael Southan, chief exec­u­tive of the Australian Olives Association (AOA), told Olive Oil Times.

It was an off-year, so we were expect­ing yields to be lower, but it was bet­ter than the pre­vi­ous off-year in 2022,” Southan explained, refer­ring to the nat­ural alter­nate bear­ing cycle of the olive tree.

On and off years

Olive trees have a nat­ural cycle of alter­nat­ing high and low pro­duc­tion years, known as on-years” and off-years,” respec­tively. During an on-year, the olive trees bear a greater quan­tity of fruit, result­ing in increased olive oil pro­duc­tion. Conversely, an off-year” is char­ac­ter­ized by a reduced yield of olives due to the stress from the pre­vi­ous on year.” Olive oil pro­duc­ers often mon­i­tor these cycles to antic­i­pate and plan for vari­a­tions in pro­duc­tion.

In some areas, frosts or hot winds at flow­er­ing resulted in lit­tle to no fruit set, but luck­ily, this was not the case for the major olive grow­ing areas,” he added.

Some dam­age came from the olive lace bug. Though the bug can cause olive trees to lose their leaves, its impact was milder than antic­i­pated.

It was an issue for some small groves par­tic­u­larly, as this pest has not impacted them in the past,” Southan said. Still, it is a native insect which has been around for many years. The cooler and wet­ter pre­ced­ing sum­mer suited the olive lace bug in increas­ing its num­bers.”

While large olive oil pro­duc­ers may ben­e­fit from economies of scale to off­set ris­ing pro­duc­tion costs, smaller pro­duc­ers often face a dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion.

Natural events were just one of many chal­lenges faced by Australian pro­duc­ers of high-qual­ity olive oil.

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Labor costs continue to cause headaches for small producers across Australia. (Photo: Ashbolt Farm)

The har­vest was smaller than most years. That was due to the drought and the weather hit­ting the flow­er­ing. On top of that, we did a major prune last year,” said Anne Ashbolt, co-owner at Ashbolt Farm, the south­ern Australian island of Tasmania.

In Australia, it is always about the labor and the cost of prun­ing and har­vest­ing,” she added. Larger groves can use the mas­sive Colossus machines. Smaller groves like ours, pick the olives with hand­held rakes.”

Several other pro­duc­ers of high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil also pointed to the ris­ing pro­duc­tion costs as a chal­lenge they have faced this year.

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Post-Covid, the biggest chal­lenge has been stay­ing within bud­get, par­tic­u­larly with ris­ing labor and con­sum­able costs,” said Stephen and Sui Tham, own­ers of Cape Shanck Olive Estate.

The farm, located in the south­east­ern cor­ner of Australia’s main­land in Victoria, also had to deal with severe weather con­di­tions.

The late spring heavy down­pour coin­cided with the flow­er­ing period. This really affected the amount of fruit in the trees,” Tham said. Following a dry and fairly warm sum­mer, the tem­per­a­tures plum­meted and were accom­pa­nied by fre­quent and occa­sional heavy rains affect­ing the ripen­ing of our fruit.”

Interestingly, the har­vest started later than usual, begin­ning in mid-May with the first Leccino trees.

The quan­tity har­vested was gen­er­ally lower than pre­vi­ous years, not unex­pected given the effects of the spring rains,” Tham said.

These unusual con­di­tions also impacted other vital aspects of extra vir­gin olive oil pro­duc­tion. In gen­eral, the olive oils of our five vari­eties were milder, unusu­ally so for the Picual and Picholine vari­eties. It might cer­tainly suit some palates,” Tham said.

In north­ern Victoria, grow­ers encoun­tered spring freeze episodes that neg­a­tively impacted pro­duc­tion.

Our har­vest was sat­is­fac­tory,” said John Symington, owner of Oasis Olives. We had lost a lot of flow­er­ing due to frost last spring, so we had lower than usual expec­ta­tions, and the har­vest came in with a result towards the lower end of the range of expec­ta­tions.”

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Frost during flowering lowered the yield for the producers at Oasis Olives. (Photo: Oasis Olives)

Climate is always a com­pli­cat­ing fac­tor as it is dif­fer­ent every year. This sea­son is a very benign sum­mer as the fruit ripened, result­ing in milder than usual oils,” Symington added. Climate is beyond our con­trol, but we look to chang­ing the mix of vari­eties in our best olive oils to make them a lit­tle more com­plex or robust depend­ing on the con­di­tions.”

Symington noted that chal­leng­ing olive sea­sons add fur­ther com­plex­ity to olive oil pro­duc­tion.

Trying to ensure qual­ity always involves some trade-offs. If it is a choice between har­vest­ing early for qual­ity or later for quan­tity, we are happy to choose qual­ity, but it is not always so clear cut,” he said.

If we har­vest our pre­mium vari­eties such as Coratina or Picual very early for a par­tic­u­larly good olive oil, by delay­ing other vari­eties, we may increase the risk of anthrac­nose down­grad­ing the olive oil from some sus­cep­ti­ble vari­eties such as Leccino or Barnea,” the pro­ducer added.

It is not logis­ti­cally pos­si­ble to har­vest every­thing as quickly as we would like, so we need to make those trade-offs,” Symington explained.

On the oppo­site side of the coun­try, in Western Australia, farm­ers encoun­tered highly unusual weather con­di­tions, sim­i­lar to recent years in south­ern Europe, with ris­ing tem­per­a­tures and severe drought.

Ian Wildly, the owner of Sherwood Springs, has been man­ag­ing around 1,000 olive trees since 1999, when the farm planted Frantoio, Leccino, Pendolino and Minerva olive vari­eties.

The most recent har­vest in May 2024 was well below expec­ta­tions,” Wildly said. Rainfall dur­ing the last two win­ters was well below aver­age, and while the trees are irri­gated dur­ing sum­mer, lack of soil mois­ture meant less spring foliage growth. The flow­er­ing was light and patchy.”

We expect hot, dry weather in sum­mer. But 2023/24 was excep­tional,” he added. Zero rain­fall from October 2023 until May 2024 and extended days of tem­per­a­tures above 40 ºC.”

Wildly also pointed out an emerg­ing prob­lem: dam­age caused by Port Lincoln Ringneck par­rots.

It is native to Australia and inhab­its the forests in the south­west, feed­ing on flow­ers and fruit of euca­lyp­tus trees,” he said. Recently, they have dis­cov­ered that olives are an easy food source. The par­rots nip off the fruit­ing branch as the olives mature, feed­ing on the fruits and seed on the ground.”

It is not only the cur­rent year crop that is lost but the fruit­ing branch for the fol­low­ing year,” he added. Lack of ade­quate prun­ing over the years has also con­tributed. This has been addressed by a con­certed effort to pol­lard one or two scaf­fold branches on each tree. Early signs are encour­ag­ing with strong new growth.”

The local mar­ket is strong, but poor yields gen­er­ally have increased prices, maybe to the point where some con­sumers switch to a cheaper alter­na­tive, such as canola oil,” Wildly warned.

According to Southan, the major oppor­tu­ni­ties with the cur­rent prices for extra vir­gin olive oil are for large agri­cul­tural busi­nesses to diver­sify their oper­a­tions with large grove plant­i­ngs, par­tic­u­larly where they have water avail­able for irri­ga­tion.”

Challenges exist for smaller busi­nesses where the econ­omy of scale is not suf­fi­cient for them to be as prof­itable as they would like in pro­duc­ing extra vir­gin olive oil,” he con­cluded. Table olives present a great oppor­tu­nity for them.”



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