Albanian Olive Oil Exports Quadruple in First Quarter of 2023, Officials Say

Albanian olive oil exports have quadru­pled in the first four months of 2023 com­pared to last year, accord­ing to com­ments from the coun­try’s deputy min­is­ter of agri­cul­ture reported by Euroactiv.

Arian Jaupllari said drought-dec­i­mated har­vests across the Mediterranean basin and a record yield for Albania in the 2022/23 crop year had cre­ated the per­fect storm for exporters.

Albanian olive oil exports reached 1,258 tons in the first four months of the year com­pared to just 326 tons exported in the same period of 2022.

In November 2022, the International Olive Council esti­mated that Albanian olive oil pro­duc­tion would reach a record-high 15,500 tons. However, data from the national sta­tis­tics agency released in January indi­cated Albania pro­duced 26,000 tons, more than dou­ble the five-year aver­age.

At the same time, the European Union pro­duced just 1.5 mil­lion tons of olive oil in 2022/23, the low­est yield from the bloc since 2014/15.

Albania’s aston­ish­ing pro­duc­tion increase comes as domes­tic con­sump­tion is expected to reach 17,000 tons in the cur­rent crop year, lead­ing pro­duc­ers to worry that the country’s over­pro­duc­tion will drive down prices, which cur­rently sit at about €4.60 per liter, and make profit mar­gins even more razor-thin than usual.

“Overproduction comes for two rea­sons. First, due to the con­tin­u­ous increase of the pro­duc­tion area, and sec­ond, the last pro­duc­tion sea­son was char­ac­ter­ized by high yield, or as it can be said in pop­u­lar lan­guage, it was a ​‘good year’ for pro­duc­tion,” Drini Imami, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at the Agricultural University of Tirana, told local media.

According to Istat, Albania’s national sta­tis­tics agency, there are 10.7 mil­lion olive trees in pro­duc­tion in Albania, a 30 per­cent increase com­pared to the pre­vi­ous decade. The rapid growth in olive cul­ti­va­tion is what offi­cials largely attribute to the dra­matic rise in pro­duc­tion.

While high pro­duc­tion costs and macro­eco­nomic head­winds in Albania have made it dif­fi­cult to sell locally pro­duced olive oil in the coun­try, the poor har­vests across the neigh­bor­ing E.U. have pro­vided an export chan­nel for Albanian pro­duc­ers, with olive oil ship­ments to France, Germany, Italy and Spain ris­ing.

While 2023 is expected to be an excep­tional year, European Commission data indi­cate that olive and olive oil exports by value from Albania to the E.U. have been ris­ing recently.

In 2022, Albania exported €14 mil­lion of olives and olive oil to the bloc, a 17 per­cent increase com­pared to 2021 and dou­ble what they were in 2019. Commission data show that olives and olive oil ship­ments rep­re­sent nearly 10 per­cent of the coun­try’s agri­cul­tural exports to the bloc.

Still, not all pro­duc­ers in Albania see the trend of ris­ing exports as a bonus. According to local media, most Albanian exports are col­lected locally from many farm­ers and shipped in bulk to be bot­tled and dis­trib­uted. As a result, pro­duc­ers receive €3.60 per liter, which they say is below cost.

However, Jaupllari said the gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing sub­si­dies to meet the con­cerns of local pro­duc­ers.

He expects exports to con­tinue to increase and said the Ministry of Agriculture was close to strik­ing a deal to ship more olive oil across the Adriatic Sea to Italy.

“The min­istry, together with experts and the pri­vate sec­tor, is con­tin­u­ing the coop­er­a­tion so that the pro­duc­tion and export of olive oil is another suc­cess story of Albanian agri­cul­ture,” he said.

“These mech­a­nisms and oth­ers were estab­lished, tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion the effects of cli­mate change, which have brought drought in Spain, Italy and France, are cre­at­ing the con­di­tions to increase the com­pet­i­tive­ness of Albanian olive oil,” he added.

• Euroactiv
• Euroactiv
• European Commission