`Low Olive Oil Reserves Cast Shadow on Spain’s Increased Production - Olive Oil Times
Enter keywords and hit Go →
enEnglish
enEnglishfrFrançaiselελληνικάdeDeutscheitItalianozh-CN中文ptPortuguêsesEspañoltrTürkçehrHrvatskija日本語hiहिंदी
enEnglish
enEnglishfrFrançaiselελληνικάdeDeutscheitItalianozh-CN中文ptPortuguêsesEspañoltrTürkçehrHrvatskija日本語hiहिंदी

Low Olive Oil Reserves Cast Shadow on Spain’s Increased Production

By Erin Ridley
Nov. 30, 2015 16:27 UTC
Summary Summary

Spain’s olive oil pro­duc­tion for the 2015 – 2016 sea­son is esti­mated to increase sig­nif­i­cantly, but low reserves will limit the actual inven­tory increase to just 80,000 tons. The indus­try faces chal­lenges due to reduced reserves from the pre­vi­ous year and hopes for improved con­di­tions in the future despite lim­ited rain.

After a dis­mal 2014 – 2015 har­vest, esti­mates for a sub­stan­tial increase in Spain’s 2015 – 2016 olive oil pro­duc­tion have come as wel­come news. But low reserves are cast­ing a shadow, reduc­ing a per­ceived increase of 398,000 tons to an actual inven­tory increase of just 80,000.

In October, the Government of Andalucia released offi­cial esti­mates that the country’s olive oil indus­try should pro­duce some 1,240,000 tons dur­ing the 2015 – 2016 sea­son, a seem­ingly large increase over last year’s out­put of just 842,000 tons.

Ultimately, how­ever, the actual inven­tory increase will be a great deal less given that this year fol­lows a very poor 2014 – 2015 pro­duc­tion sea­son. Cristobal Gallego of Asaja Jaén told elEconomista Agro that ​“on October 1st of last year, there were reserves of around 500,000 tons, and reserves this year are only around 180,000 tons.”

This means that this year Spain will have an inven­tory of 1,420,000 ver­sus 1,342,000 last year, trans­lat­ing to a mere 80,000-ton increase.

As it stands, the exist­ing reserves are likely owed to the price increases over the sum­mer, which left con­sumers turn­ing to alter­na­tives. Explained Gallego, ​“If the prices hadn’t gone up as they did in August, we would have been left with­out oil.”

With sup­ply still lim­ited, the indus­try now looks to the future, hop­ing that after two rel­a­tively unpro­duc­tive sea­sons (one very bad; the other just aver­age), that next year will bring more promise.

The out­look, how­ever, isn’t nec­es­sar­ily good. Rain, which can be ben­e­fi­cial dur­ing har­vest — both for the olives being har­vested, and the sea­son to come — has so far been lim­ited.


More articles on:  , ,

Advertisement

Related Articles