Bulk Exports from Greece Help Fuel the Italian Olive Oil Industry

Greece is con­sis­tently the sec­ond-largest sup­plier of the Italian olive oil indus­try after Spain cov­er­ing a sig­nif­i­cant part of Italy’s demand for imported olive oil each year, accord­ing to an analy­sis of the Italian olive oil sec­tor by the Office of Economic and Commercial Affairs of the Greek Embassy in Milan.

In 2021, more than 75 per­cent of Greek olive oil exports went to Italy in bulk, the analy­sis found. In other words, Greece sup­plied more than 111,000 tons of the 500,000 tons of olive oil Italy imported, rep­re­sent­ing 22 per­cent of all Italy’s olive oil imports last year.

On the other hand, Spain, the world’s largest pro­ducer and exporter of olive oil, accounted for more than 60 per­cent of the Italian olive oil imports that year.

Total exports of Greek olive oil of all grades reached 146,000 tons in 2021 and were val­ued at €533 mil­lion, while 165,000 tons val­ued at €470 mil­lion were exported from the coun­try in 2020.

The fig­ures indi­cate that Italy is the largest buyer of Greek olive oil. However, the oil from Greece flows to neigh­bor­ing Italy in bulk, with Greek pro­duc­ers and exporters rou­tinely fail­ing to gain the added value of branded olive oil.

Additionally, the report said that Italian importers usu­ally pay less for Greek olive oil than oil pro­duced in Italy. Based on his­tor­i­cal data, until 2020, a kilo­gram of imported Greek extra vir­gin olive oil cost Italian traders less than €3.00 com­pared with the price at ori­gin in Italy of around €3.70.

According to Medit Hellas, a com­pany based in Patras that exports unpack­aged olive oil to Italy and other coun­tries, Greek pro­duc­ers are largely depen­dent on Italian traders when look­ing to sell their oils.

“The large pro­duc­ing and bot­tling com­pa­nies of Italy call the shots in the Greek olive oil sec­tor to a great extent,” the com­pa­ny’s own­ers told Olive Oil Times. ​“They come each year and buy large amounts of Greek olive oil.”

“Italy bot­tles 800,000 to 900,000 tons of olive oil each sea­son,” they added. ​“With the coun­try’s pro­duc­tion rang­ing between 250,000 and 300,000 tons, they need a lot more olive oil, which they buy from other pro­duc­ing coun­tries, includ­ing Greece and Spain.”

“Greek olive oil is gen­er­ally pricier than oils of other coun­tries, but Italians buy it in large quan­ti­ties and always in bulk to make blends,” the Medit Hella own­ers con­tin­ued. ​“The Italian mar­ket for olive oil is dom­i­nated by domes­tic brands. We are unaware of a sin­gle Greek pro­ducer export­ing branded olive oil to Italy.”

It is also com­mon prac­tice for Italian com­mer­cial agents to travel to Greek olive oil-pro­duc­ing regions to mon­i­tor how the sea­son is evolv­ing and what to expect in terms of quan­tity and qual­ity.

Last spring, Italian importers paid a visit to the area of Laconia in the south­ern Peloponnese to take a closer look at the flow­er­ing of the olive trees.

Petrina’s agri­cul­tural coop­er­a­tive in Laconia, one of the first olive oil asso­ci­a­tions in Greece founded more than a cen­tury ago, has long been export­ing olive oil to Italy.

“Around 30 to 40 per­cent of the olive oil we pro­duce each year is exported to Italy in bulk,” the coop­er­a­tive told Olive Oil Times. ​“We also export packed branded olive oil to other coun­tries, includ­ing the United States and Canada. However, we haven’t yet fig­ured out how to send bot­tled olive oil to Italy.”

“We pro­duce and export only extra vir­gin olive oil of top qual­ity,” they added. ​“Of course, despite the high stan­dards of our olive oil, we do not get a pre­mium for our exports to Italy since our oil is shipped unbranded.”

Around 30 per­cent of the olive oil bot­tled in Italy is exclu­sively of Italian ori­gin, the report said, while the widely accepted high-qual­ity of Italian olive oil is crit­i­cal to its suc­cess in global mar­kets.

In addi­tion, the long-stand­ing prac­tice of Italian bot­tlers acquir­ing olive oils from other coun­tries and blend­ing them has resulted in blended olive oil being reg­is­tered in con­sumers’ con­scious­ness glob­ally as an exclu­sively ​‘Made in Italy’ prod­uct.

A few years back, Costco, the world’s sixth-largest retailer, switched from Italian to Greek olive oil for its Kirkland sig­na­ture extra vir­gin olive oil blend due to sup­ply prob­lems and ris­ing prices of Italian olive oils.

Costco changed the cap and the label of the bot­tles accord­ingly to illus­trate the new con­tent. However, after a lit­tle more than a year, the com­pany returned to blends from Italian sup­pli­ers after its cus­tomers looked to buy Italian olive oil.

“It was what mem­bers wanted,” Chad Sokol, Costco’s olive oil buyer at the time, told Olive Oil Times in a 2016 inter­view. ​“They’re used to what they’re used to, and there’s a per­cep­tion that Italian extra vir­gin olive oil is top-of-the-line. The Greek oil did ok. I pre­ferred it in a blind tast­ing, but it was not quite as strong a seller.”

Branded Greek olive oil remains absent from Italy’s domes­tic mar­ket, where mono­va­ri­etal (oils made from a sin­gle olive vari­ety) and blended olive oils of Italian pro­duc­tion dom­i­nate the mar­ket for olive oil.

Sofia Zervaki, a Greek who has been liv­ing and work­ing in Rome for the last 20 years, said that the super­mar­ket shelves in the cap­i­tal are packed with ​‘Made in Italy’ olive oil and blends of olive oil of European Union ori­gin.

“I usu­ally use olive oil from the fam­ily groves back in Greece to cook with,” Zervaki told Olive Oil Times. ​“However, dur­ing the lock­downs, I had to buy olive oil from the super­mar­ket, and I could only find Italian oil or blends pro­duced by Italian com­pa­nies. There is no bot­tled olive oil from Spain or Greece.”

“What is more, the labels on the bot­tles are not as infor­ma­tive and com­pre­hen­sive as on other food prod­ucts, yogurt and feta cheese, for exam­ple,” she added. ​“One can­not know the exact coun­try of pro­duc­tion of the olive oil used in Italian blends.”

According to European Union leg­is­la­tion, blends of olive oil sold in the 27-mem­ber bloc should bear rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion on their labels des­ig­nat­ing whether the blended oils were pro­duced within the E.U. or in non‑E.U. coun­tries, nonethe­less, with­out spec­i­fy­ing the exact coun­try of ori­gin.

Meanwhile, the authors of the analy­sis pro­posed a set of mea­sures for Greek pro­duc­ers and exporters to take to pen­e­trate the Italian mar­ket with branded olive oils, includ­ing con­sis­tently par­tic­i­pat­ing in food fairs and olive oil com­pe­ti­tions held in the neigh­bor­ing coun­try, orga­niz­ing famil­iar­iza­tion tours for Italian jour­nal­ists and traders to mills and bot­tling facil­i­ties in Greece and invit­ing food blog­gers and influ­encers from Italy to attend tast­ing events in Greece.

However, break­ing into the Italian olive oil mar­ket with branded prod­ucts could be ardu­ous for aspir­ing Greek pro­duc­ers.

“The olive oil mar­ket in Italy is mainly sus­tained by the domes­ti­cally pro­duced olive oil, and Italian con­sumers are addicted to the organolep­tic and qual­ity char­ac­ter­is­tics of Italian vari­eties, much like con­sumers in Greece,” Yiorgos Economou, the gen­eral direc­tor of the Greek Association of Olive Oil Bottlers (SEVITEL), told Olive Oil Times.

“Bottled olive oil in small quan­ti­ties from other coun­tries could reach the shelves in spe­cial­ized gro­cery stores, but the expected sales would in no way cover the costs of export­ing and pro­mot­ing the oils in Italy,” he added.

“When it comes to Greek exporters, a coor­di­nated effort by ​‘Enterprise Greece,’ the national orga­ni­za­tion for invest­ing and trad­ing, might coax some com­pa­nies to con­tribute their resources to pro­mote their brand,” Economou con­tin­ued. ​“However, based on prior expe­ri­ence, most exporters would select other, eas­ier-to-reach export des­ti­na­tions.”

Economou also attrib­uted the lim­ited, in com­par­i­son to the country’s exports of bulk olive oil, exports of pack­aged Greek olive oil to the fact that global mar­kets remain largely unreach­able for Greek pro­duc­ers and exporters.

“Exports of Greek olive oil in bulk are not to blame for the country’s lim­ited exports of branded olive oil,” he said. ​“The issue is mainly due to the inef­fi­cacy of domes­tic exporters in set­ting up proper trad­ing chan­nels and the small size of Greek com­pa­nies, which lack the finan­cial resources to pro­mote and mar­ket their olive oils abroad for extended peri­ods.”

“Fortunately, for the time being, Greek olive oil is highly appre­ci­ated by Italian and Spanish traders for its supe­rior qual­ity and spe­cial organolep­tic char­ac­ter­is­tics,” Economou con­cluded. ​“Otherwise, large quan­ti­ties of it would remain unsold, with a pro­found impact on our grow­ers and pro­duc­ers.”

• Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs
• Kathimerini
• Agrotypos