Uruguay Anticipates Harvest Rebound

After a dis­ap­point­ing har­vest in 2024, Uruguay’s Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fishing expects olive oil pro­duc­tion to rebound in 2025.

According to pre­lim­i­nary data from the pri­vate sec­tor, Uruguay pro­duced 614 met­ric tons of olive oil in 2024, about one-third of the total yield in 2023 and 63 per­cent below the five-year aver­age.

“The effects of the his­toric drought that the coun­try expe­ri­enced in 2023 were reflected in the results of a greatly reduced har­vest in 2024,” María Noel Ackermann, an econ­o­mist in the ministry’s office of agri­cul­tural pro­gram­ming and pol­icy, wrote in an annual crop report.

However, Noel Ackermann described the out­look for the 2025 har­vest as ​“aus­pi­cious” after a wet win­ter and mild spring tem­per­a­tures resulted in a pos­i­tive fruit set.

“The out­look for 2025, with bet­ter weather con­di­tions for the time being, is aus­pi­cious, with ade­quate flow­er­ing and promis­ing fruit set­ting,” she wrote.

Several pro­duc­ers, includ­ing the country’s largest, con­firmed to Olive Oil Times that the 2025 har­vest will be far bet­ter than the 2024 har­vest but will unlikely reach the 2,047 tons pro­duced in 2023.

Rising pro­duc­tion – Uruguay pro­duced nearly seven times as much olive oil annu­ally in the past five years com­pared to the pre­vi­ous five years – has been matched with increas­ing con­sump­tion.

“The esti­mated con­sump­tion of olive oil and olive pomace oil in Uruguay has aver­aged around 1,800 tons in the last three years, a lit­tle more than half a liter per capita,” Noel Ackermann wrote. ​“A grow­ing trend is evi­dent with a medium-term view, given that national con­sump­tion was around 1,400 tons a decade ago.”

Local pro­duc­tion now accounts for an increas­ing share of Uruguayan con­sump­tion, mak­ing up roughly half of national olive oil sales.

About half of national pro­duc­tion is sold through whole­salers and super­mar­kets, with 30 per­cent sold direct-to-con­sumer and another 19 per­cent sold as white-label prod­ucts.

Like every­where else, the poor global har­vests in the 2022/23 and 2023/24 crop years caused olive oil prices to rise in Uruguay.

Data from the National Institute of Statistics found that olive oil prices at retail increased by 23 per­cent in 2023 and 15 per­cent in the first ten months of 2024.

“Changes in con­sumer behav­ior, ori­ented towards health­ier, more nat­ural, safe and high-qual­ity foods, offer pos­si­bil­i­ties for greater devel­op­ment of the sec­tor in the future,” Noel Ackermann wrote.

The com­bi­na­tion of poor har­vests across much of the olive oil world and rel­a­tively strong domes­tic pro­duc­tion in recent years has resulted in imported olive oils los­ing mar­ket share in Uruguay.

According to the min­istry, Uruguayan olive oil and olive pomace oil imports reached 695 tons in 2023, a 20 per­cent decrease com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year.

In the first ten months of 2024, Uruguay imported 552 tons of olive oil, a nine per­cent decrease com­pared to the same period in 2023.

Noel Ackermann said the con­tin­ued decline in imports despite a very low 2024 har­vest indi­cated that con­sump­tion has fallen, likely due to higher prices.

Despite decreased vol­umes, olive oil imports by value reached $4.5 (€4.37) mil­lion in the first ten months of 2024, a 28 per­cent increase from the same period in 2023.

The plu­ral­ity of Uruguayan olive oil imports by value came from Argentina, 37 per­cent, which gained mar­ket share in the pre­vi­ous two years due to the poor har­vests in Spain and Italy. Imports from the two European nations com­prised 35 per­cent and 23 per­cent, respec­tively.

Rising pro­duc­tion has also led to an increase in olive oil exports, specif­i­cally to neigh­bor­ing Brazil.

From April 2023 to March 2024 (the 2023/24 com­mer­cial year in Uruguay), exports reached 638 tons val­ued at $4.5 mil­lion, a 20 per­cent increase in vol­ume sold and an 87 per­cent increase in rev­enue gen­er­ated. Eighty per­cent of exports were extra vir­gin olive oil, with the rest cor­re­spond­ing to vir­gin.

However, these fig­ures will be dra­mat­i­cally lower for the 2024/25 com­mer­cial year. From April to October, Uruguayan pro­duc­ers exported 52 tons of olive oil, an 88 per­cent decrease from the same period in the pre­vi­ous year, at a value of $608,000 (€590,000).

While vir­tu­ally all vir­gin olive oil was exported to Spain to be blended and re-exported, two-thirds of extra vir­gin olive oil exports went to Brazil, fol­lowed by Spain, the United States and Argentina.

“Brazil and the United States are the sec­tor’s big bets for extra vir­gin olive oil,” Noel Ackermann wrote. ​“These coun­tries are strong global importers, with expand­ing con­sump­tion and pro­duc­tion that fails to sat­isfy local demand.”

“In the case of Brazil, there is the pref­er­en­tial entry granted by Mercosur and geo­graph­i­cal prox­im­ity, which deter­mines lower trans­porta­tion costs,” she con­cluded. ​“The United States is attrac­tive because it is the mar­ket that pays the best for the prod­uct (last year, it was sold at more than $8,000 (€7,760) FOB per ton).”