Troubles Persist for Tunisian Olive Oil, As Officials Hope to Turn a Corner

The world’s largest olive oil pro­ducer out­side of the European Union is look­ing for a fresh start. A renewed focus on com­mu­ni­ca­tion, cul­ture and exports will be fuel­ing new ini­tia­tives in Tunisia, say offi­cials.

The goal is to push some of the coun­try’s olive oil brands into new inter­na­tional mar­kets. The core of the project is to give the world a new image of Tunisian olive oil and its pro­duc­tion prac­tices.

Given the col­lapse of olive oil prices and the shrink­ing prof­itabil­ity of pro­duc­ing oils for grow­ers, it could be a tough bat­tle.

Add in the polit­i­cal tur­moil that is shak­ing the coun­try and tar­iffs, and the chal­lenge seems even more daunt­ing. Still, Tunisian offi­cials are opti­mistic about the future.

“We are going to make national com­pa­nies able to posi­tion them­selves in the most rel­e­vant inter­na­tional mar­kets for pack­aged oil and to effec­tively com­pete in new mar­kets,” Youseff Neji, the pres­i­dent of Tunisia’s Export Promotion Center (Cepex), said.

China, Japan, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Saudi Arabia and Brazil are the main mar­kets that offi­cials from Cepex are aim­ing for.

In a press brief­ing, Neji explained that exports cur­rently face sev­eral hur­dles that may eas­ily be removed. He cited the bureau­cratic process Tunisian com­pa­nies have to undergo to be listed as reg­is­tered exporters as one of the main hur­dles.

However, with the new plan in place, exporters will be able to reg­is­ter with the cus­toms author­ity more quickly and eas­ily.

Tunisian olive pro­duc­tion in 2019 was quite good, with a yield of 300,000 tons, accord­ing to the International Olive Council, the coun­try’s third-high­est yield on record. Overall, the olive oil sec­tor accounts for a large share of the total agri­cul­tural out­put of the coun­try.

“The Tunisian olive sec­tor is of great impor­tance in the revi­tal­iza­tion of the national econ­omy since it rep­re­sents a real source of income in for­eign cur­rency for the coun­try,” Neji said.

However, olive oil prices have col­lapsed in Tunisia as well as else­where in the Mediterranean and do not show any sign of recov­ery.

Growing olives in some areas of the coun­try is becom­ing increas­ingly dif­fi­cult. In those areas, many of which oper­ate using tra­di­tional farm­ing and har­vest­ing meth­ods, low olive oil prices are leav­ing farm­ers and pro­duc­ers with lit­tle if any prof­its.

“A big share of our pro­duc­tion this year is going to be wasted,” Mohammed Mahgub, from the east­ern Tunisian region of Mahdia, told Olive Oil Times. ​“A few months ago we could count on the com­mit­ment of large com­pa­nies, now it is all gone.”

Olive oil prices are now so low in the area that some com­pa­nies have retracted their ear­lier com­mit­ments and will not invest in har­vest­ing olives.

“In Mahdia, olive oil prices are now set to three Dinars ($1.07) per kilo­gram,” Mahgub said.

A new nar­ra­tive alone will not be enough to bring Tunisian olive oil to new inter­na­tional mar­kets, but offi­cials at Cepex believe opti­mism and a new vision mark the begin­ning of a drive to bring in much-needed investors, tech­nol­ogy and dynamism.

“They tell us it will get bet­ter with the new ini­tia­tives, so we hope for the best,” Mahgub said.

• African Manager