`Italy and Tunisia Exporting More Olive Oil to Spain - Olive Oil Times
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Italy and Tunisia Exporting More Olive Oil to Spain

By Julie Butler
Mar. 7, 2013 10:43 UTC

The dras­tic drop in Spain’s olive oil pro­duc­tion this sea­son appears to have been a boon for Italy and Tunisia, which have both dra­mat­i­cally increased sales to their Mediterranean neigh­bor, accord­ing to data from Agri-food Cooperatives Spain.

Italy, mean­while, remains the main for­eign buyer of Spanish olive oil, though the vol­ume has shrunk, and Spain has lost ground in the cru­cial United States mar­ket.

Imports into Spain

Imports from Italy to Spain reached 5,065 tons in the first three months of the sea­son (October to December ), nearly quadru­ple that for the same quar­ter in 2011. Those from Tunisia are up 256 per­cent, to 2624 tons.

Portugal, how­ever, remains the main for­eign sup­plier for Spain, deliv­er­ing nearly 7,000 tons for the quar­ter, down just 2 per­cent on the same period in 2011. The Sovena group, which has plan­ta­tions in Portugal and sup­plies olive oil for Mercadona super­mar­kets in Spain, accounts for much of this vol­ume.

Italy was next, fol­lowed by Morocco (4,194 tons), and France (up by half to 2,044 tons) then by Greece (713 tons) and Argentina (down a quar­ter to 580 tons).

Overall, olive oil imports into Spain were up 85 per­cent in vol­ume, reach­ing nearly 23,000 tons, and 113 per­cent in value. Of these, 11,750 were lam­pante grade and nearly 8,700 vir­gin or vir­gin extra and the rest cov­ered other cat­e­gories and frac­tions of olive oil.

Exports down a fifth

Meanwhile, the coun­try, still in finan­cial cri­sis, has suf­fered a decline in exports to the tune of nearly a fifth in terms of vol­ume, down to 178,361 tons for the quar­ter, though in euro value the drop was just 2.3 per­cent.
Of these exports, 131,911 tons were vir­gin or vir­gin extra, 42,000 were other grades or frac­tions of olive oil, and 4400 were lam­pante.

The Agri-food Cooperatives report shows that Italy remains the main for­eign des­ti­na­tion for Spanish olive oil — tak­ing a third of the total — but the vol­ume has dived about 40 per­cent, to nearly 61,000 tons for the quar­ter.

Portugal, Spain’s main source of imports, is also its sec­ond biggest mar­ket for exports, tak­ing about 22,300 tons. France fol­lows with 16,000 tons, almost unchanged, but trade into the U.S. mar­ket has declined nearly a third to just over 14,000 tons.

On the pos­i­tive side for Spain, it sold 9,600 tons to the United Kingdom, up 16 per­cent, and nearly 9,200 tons to China, up a mas­sive 63 per­cent. Exports to Brazil, Japan and India were up more than 40 per­cent but those to Australia fell about 39 per­cent.

According to Spain’s Olive Oil Agency (AA), the country’s pro­duc­tion in the first quar­ter was 383,000 tons, less than half of that for the first quar­ter of 2011/12, which set a record for pro­duc­tion.

Agri-food Cooperatives Spain pre­dicts a total yield of just 605,000 tons this sea­son. The con­se­quence of adverse weather last year, par­tic­u­larly drought, it amounts to less than half of Spain’s aver­age for the last four sea­sons and is down nearly 63 per­cent on last season’s 1.6 mil­lion tons.


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