`Turkey’s Olive Oil Exports Fall by Half - Olive Oil Times

Turkey’s Olive Oil Exports Fall by Half

By Isabel Putinja
Jan. 12, 2015 09:50 UTC

Turkey’s olive oil exports have declined by 52 per­cent in the past two months when com­pared to the same period last year.

Exports are down because the country’s olive oil pro­duc­ers are hold­ing on to their stocks with expec­ta­tions that prices will rise fol­low­ing the poor har­vests in Italy and Spain due to bad weather and pest infes­ta­tions, and hopes they will be able to cash in on high inter­na­tional demand for olive oil.
See Also:Complete Coverage of the 2014 Olive Harvest
According to fig­ures released by the Aegean Olive and Olive Oil Exporters Association (EZZİB), Turkey exported 3,600 tons of olive oil in the last two months, com­pared to 7,600 tons dur­ing the same period last year, a decline of 52 per­cent.

While Turkey’s olive oil pro­duc­ers wait for prices to rise, they do not want to lose their for­eign mar­kets. Our pro­duc­ers are now export­ing their prod­ucts for almost noth­ing just not to lose their mar­ket share to their strong Spanish and Italian com­peti­tors,” reported Gürkan Renklidağ, the head of EZZİB, to Hürriyet, one of Turkey’s major news­pa­pers.

During the 2013/14 crop year, Turkey was the fourth-largest olive oil pro­ducer, with a 16.7 global share of pro­duc­tion. The gov­ern­ment hoped to boost Turkey’s rank­ing by intro­duc­ing incen­tives in the form of sub­si­dies and tax breaks. For the cur­rent 2014/15 crop year, esti­mates by the International Olive Council (IOC) put Turkey’s out­put at 190,000 tons, the same as the pre­vi­ous year.


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