Competition Data Offer Insights Into Olive Oil World

Now that the dust has set­tled on the eleventh edi­tion of the World Olive Oil Competition, it is pos­si­ble to see some trends through the exten­sive sta­tis­tics pub­lished by the con­test orga­niz­ers.

While there are hun­dreds of data points to ana­lyze, sev­eral key themes emerge, point­ing to inter­est­ing direc­tions in the olive oil world.

Despite poor har­vest, a record num­ber of NYIOOC entries and awards

According to pre­lim­i­nary data from the International Olive Council, the 2022/23 crop year was one of the worst in recent mem­ory. Global pro­duc­tion reached just 2.73 mil­lion tons, the low­est total since 2016/17 and about 17 per­cent below the five-year aver­age.

Drought and cli­mate extremes across the west­ern Mediterranean basin were widely blamed for the fall in global pro­duc­tion.

However, lower yields did not seem to have an impact on qual­ity. The num­ber of entries and awards hit record highs at the 2023 NYIOOC. Overall, pro­duc­ers from 30 coun­tries com­bined to earn 850 awards from 1,169 entries.

The tally of win­ning brands far exceeded the pre­vi­ous record set in 2022 of 801, while the num­ber of entries slightly sur­passed the 1,156 in 2021. The 73 per­cent suc­cess rate was also the sec­ond-high­est on record, falling just short of the 74 per­cent rate reached in 2022.

Digging a bit deeper, par­tic­i­pa­tion from Spain did not decline as sig­nif­i­cantly as its steep fall in pro­duc­tion may have sug­gested.

According to offi­cial data, Spain pro­duced 663,000 tons of olive oil in 2022/23, 53 per­cent below the five-year aver­age. However, the num­ber of entries (135) and awards (106) fell far less dra­mat­i­cally than the aver­age of the pre­vi­ous five com­pe­ti­tions, just 9 and 2 per­cent, respec­tively.

The sit­u­a­tion was sim­i­lar with pro­duc­ers from Italy, who also suf­fered a poor har­vest not reflected in the num­ber of entries or awards.

At the 2023 NYIOOC, Italian pro­duc­ers earned 174 awards from 224 entries, the sec­ond-high­est on record after 2021. The haul came after Italy’s worst har­vest, in terms of quan­tity, since 2018/19.

The rise of Southern Hemisphere pro­duc­ers

One of the chal­lenges faced by the NYIOOC orga­niz­ers has been the dif­fer­ence in har­vest times between the north­ern and south­ern hemi­spheres and the objec­tive to ana­lyze sam­ples at their peak of fresh­ness.

The Northern Hemisphere har­vest gen­er­ally runs from September to January, while Southern Hemisphere pro­duc­ers pick and trans­form their olives from March to July.

This year, NYIOOC orga­niz­ers split the com­pe­ti­tion into two seg­ments, judg­ing Northern Hemisphere pro­duc­ers in April and May before eval­u­at­ing Southern Hemisphere entries in September and October.

While it is hard to define the impact of the change, pro­duc­ers from seven coun­tries across three con­ti­nents in the Southern Hemisphere com­bined to earn 101 awards from a record-high 121 entries.

Southern Hemisphere par­tic­i­pa­tion was spurred by Brazil pro­duc­ers, who earned a record 48 awards from 53 entries, mak­ing the coun­try the sev­enth-most awarded at the con­test. Chile and South Africa also earned a record num­ber of awards.

The ris­ing impor­tance of olive oil qual­ity awards for pro­duc­ers and con­sumers has seen the num­ber of entries from the Southern Hemisphere steadily increase since 2014. In that time, the num­ber of entries and awards rose by 274 per­cent and 72 per­cent, respec­tively, exceed­ing the same per­cent rise in sub­mis­sions and awards from the Northern Hemisphere.

As a result, Southern Hemisphere pro­duc­ers have seen their suc­cess increase rel­a­tive to the over­all growth of the com­pe­ti­tion. This year, pro­duc­ers from the Southern Hemisphere made up 12 per­cent of total awards and 10 per­cent of total entries, a joint record.

Organic olive oil on the rise

Organic extra vir­gin olive oil is in vogue. Market research indi­cates that the organic olive oil mar­ket was val­ued at $933 mil­lion in 2021 and is pro­jected to rise to $2.2 bil­lion by 2031.

Experts attribute the sig­nif­i­cant increase in demand for organic olive oil to ris­ing con­sumer aware­ness of healthy food and sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture.

The grow­ing demand for organic olive oil is reflected in NYIOOC data. At the 2023 World Competition, organic extra vir­gin olive oil earned a record-high 241 awards from 357 entries. Organic entries enjoyed their sec­ond-high­est suc­cess rate at the com­pe­ti­tion of 68 per­cent.

Furthermore, organic extra vir­gin olive oil entries rep­re­sented a record-high 31 per­cent of total entries and 28 per­cent of total awards. While this lat­ter fig­ure was slightly below last year’s rate of 30 per­cent and the record-high from 2016 of 31 per­cent, an upward trend is evi­dent.

The strange story of this year’s blends

Any pro­ducer – award-win­ning or oth­er­wise – will say that cre­at­ing an extra vir­gin olive oil blend com­bines sci­ence and art.

Many pro­duc­ers hire spe­cial­ists to sam­ple each mono­va­ri­etal to craft a per­fectly bal­anced and har­mo­nious blend.

To the credit of pro­duc­ers and mas­ter blenders every­where, blended and mono­va­ri­etal extra vir­gin olive oils have seen sim­i­lar suc­cess in the com­pe­ti­tion over the years. However, 2023 has proven to be a glar­ing excep­tion.

This year, blends expe­ri­enced a 64 per­cent suc­cess rate (352 awards from 546 entries), while mono­va­ri­etals received an aston­ish­ing 80 per­cent suc­cess rate (498 awards from 624 entries).

The 16-point dif­fer­ence between the two is the largest on record. The suc­cess rate of blended and mono­va­ri­etal olive oils often dif­fers by five per­cent­age points or less, which was the case in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022.

The only other times the dis­crep­ancy between mono­va­ri­etal and blended suc­cess rates loomed large were in 2015, when there was a 12-point dif­fer­ence from roughly half as many entries, and in 2020, which had a nine-point dif­fer­ence from a very sim­i­lar num­ber of entries.

Furthermore, this year’s 64 per­cent suc­cess rate for blended oils was the low­est since 2020, while the 80 per­cent mono­va­ri­etal suc­cess rate was a record high.

One com­pe­ti­tion offi­cial described the result as ​“sig­nif­i­cant, but impos­si­ble to explain.”

Perfection from South African pro­duc­ers

Everyone enjoys cel­e­brat­ing per­fec­tion. This year, pro­duc­ers from South African pro­duc­ers achieved a 100 per­cent suc­cess rate — 16 awards from 16 entries.

This is an unpar­al­leled feat at the NYIOOC. To put the fig­ure in per­spec­tive, coun­tries have only achieved a per­fect suc­cess rate on 31 of 307 occa­sions since 2014. However, none did so, with more than seven entries (achieved by Japan in 2021), and 19 of the 31 coun­tries that achieved the feat did so with a sin­gle award from a sin­gle entry or two awards from two entries.

While this is the least sta­tis­ti­cally sig­nif­i­cant data point of the ones listed above, the adver­sity South African pro­duc­ers over­came to achieve this feat is also worth not­ing.

The 2023 har­vest was marred by an unprece­dented year of rolling black­outs, which dis­rupted irri­ga­tion and forced pro­duc­ers to spend more on gen­er­a­tors and fuel.

An early start to a cold win­ter and unusu­ally wet year also hin­dered the head­rest and resulted in lower lev­els of oil accu­mu­la­tion for some pro­duc­ers.

Still, pro­duc­ers over­came these obsta­cles to earn a record-high num­ber of acco­lades.

Congratulations to Albania

One last bonus point from the data analy­sis: Albania earned its first-ever NYIOOC award in 2023. Producers from the coun­try pre­vi­ously sub­mit­ted five entries on five dif­fer­ent occa­sions.

Albania’s tri­umph this year was the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year a coun­try earned its first-ever recog­ni­tion from the World Competition. Last year, pro­duc­ers from Montenegro earned three awards from four entries. The only other time a Montenegrin pro­ducer sub­mit­ted an olive oil sam­ple to the com­pe­ti­tion was in 2014.