November 2018 - E.V.O.O. market report: Good olive oil is hard to come by

New harvest period has started with particularly bad omens, especially for our country.

Let’s have a better look at what is happening in some of the major producing countries, starting with our own.

In Greece, the damage both in volumes and quality is excessive. This year, the olive oil production is estimated to be below 240.000 tons, a significant decline, above 31% of the previous year. To make matters worse, the prevalence of bad weather conditions, olive fruit fly and the fungus spilocaea oleaginea, is expected to take its toll on the quality of the harvest period. Specifically, for the area of Messenia, more than 60% of the production is expected to not fulfill the criteria for extra virgin olive oil and from the rest of the production that does, only 10% is expected to have high quality characteristics (very low acidity, rich in polyphenols, etc.).

Italy and Tunis are expected to follow the state of our country, with their production dropping even more (estimates bring their volumes for the new period to about 200.000 and 150.000-170.000 tons respectively).

On the other hand, in Spain, production is expected to reach 1.550.000 tons (above 22% increase from last year) confirming our previous estimates.

In conclusion, world wide olive production will remain about the same as previous year’s, mainly due to Spain’s big production increase. It is still though, too early to make any safe guesses regarding the trend that olive oil prices are going to follow. We can only say that the trend seems to be more stable and with less fluctuations than previous year’s. However, since premium olive oils are going to be scarce, we can expect a gradual onward trend. Everything will become clearer as we enter the final line for the new period. Let’s hope that the quality of the new harvest will change for the better.