November 2019 - E.V.O.O. market report

Harvesting has started for many people from October.

This season looks promising, especially for the countries that had a bad harvest the previous year and saw their production almost halved. Let’s see the prospects of each country seperately:

• Spain set a new production record last season with approximately 1,78 million tons. Unfortunately, this year doesn’t seem to bode well for Spanish farmers as total quantities are expected to drop to 1,25 million tons according to Andalusian agricultural cooperatives and the EU commission. The main culprits for this decline are the alternate bearing nature of the olive trees (previous year’s overproduction) and the prolonged droughts that affected particularly the areas of Cordoba and Jaén.
• Good news for Italy as production is estimated to reach 330,000 tons , almost double from the last season, according to the confederations of Cia-Agricoltori Italian, Italia Olivecola, AIFO, Unapol and institute ISMEA. Propitious weather conditions and seemingly low infection rates of the trees from diseases and insects also helped to improve the harvest.
• Probably the biggest winner this season is Tunisia. According to the Tunisian Ministry of Agriculture olive oil production may well reach 350,000 tons, a new country record, placing the country as the world’s second largest olive oil producer after Spain.
• Greece is another country that will see a large boost in production (~300,000 tons compared to ~188,000 tons last year). One thing that those number don’t show however, is the huge increase of extra virgin olive oil that is expected (and the improvement of their quality characteristics) compared to previous season where there were a lot of availability and quality issues due to bad weather conditions and olive fruit flies.
• Turkey is expected to have minimal fluctuations in their production, reaching ~ 200,000 tons.
• Syria (~120,000 tons), Morocco ( ~160,000 tons), Portugal (~140,000 tons) will also see a healthy boost in their productions this season.

In conclusion, if weather conditions continue to be favorable, season 2019-2020 will be very good with world olive oil production surpassing 3,35 million tons. Only thing that remains to be seen is how smooth the harvesting is going to progress.

*We will soon post an article regarding the reserves of the past season, the private storage scheme of 300,000 tons of Spanish olive oil and how they are going to affect the prices in conjunction with the new production.