`Spanish Eating More Butter, Less Olive Oil - Olive Oil Times

Spanish Eating More Butter, Less Olive Oil

By Julie Butler
Dec. 19, 2011 20:29 UTC

Spain is expe­ri­enc­ing a curi­ous increase in but­ter con­sump­tion and slight decline in olive oil use — trends attrib­uted by some to finan­cial cri­sis belt-tight­en­ing.

While but­ter sales in September were up 19.3 per­cent on August, those for cook­ing oils slipped.

ESADE busi­ness school mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sor Gerard Costa says it’s because Spaniards are eat­ing break­fast at home more often, instead of at cafes, and buy­ing more but­ter to put on their toast.

Spanish fam­i­lies are sav­ing money…by spend­ing less on leisure and in restau­rants, which is one rea­son the con­sump­tion of but­ter has taken off. They’re eat­ing break­fast at home and so buy­ing more cereal and but­ter,” he told radio sta­tion Onda Cero.

It’s pos­si­bly also rel­e­vant that the aver­age price of but­ter in Western Europe has fallen 6% year-on-year, fol­low­ing a down­ward global trend.

However, the over­all vol­ume of but­ter sales still remains small — just 1.1 mil­lion kilos were con­sumed in Spanish house­holds in October, com­pared to 3.1 mil­lion kilos of mar­garine, and 37 mil­lion kilos of olive oil. That’s about 20g of but­ter, 70g of mar­garine and 810g of olive oil in a month for each of Spain’s 47 mil­lion inhab­i­tants.

Nevertheless, it’s still a strik­ing sta­tis­tic that in the five years to 2009, but­ter con­sump­tion rose 51.3 per­cent — the only dairy good to show growth in Spain apart from cheese.

Olive oil use down in house­holds, restau­rants

Meanwile, accord­ing to a newly-released Spanish Ministry of the Environment and Rural and Marine Affairs (MARM) house­hold food and bev­er­age sur­vey, con­sump­tion of olive oil was down 2.4 per­cent and sun­flower oil down 5 per­cent year-on-year for the twelve months to the end of October. Overall food spend­ing fell 1.8 per­cent.

This year, per capita house­hold con­sump­tion of olive oil is 9.5 liters and sun­flower oil 3.3 liters, com­pared to 9.8 and 3.5 liters respec­tively in 2010. And per capita spend­ing on olive oil for the month of October this year was €1.94, down from €2.03 for October 2010. For other cook­ing oils it fell from €0.32 to €0.25, while for mar­garine it stayed at €0.25 and for but­ter rose from €0.13 to €0.15.

As for the hos­pi­tal­ity sec­tor, first quar­ter con­sump­tion for 2011 was down 6.3 per­cent for olive oil but up 5.7 per­cent for sun­flower oil com­pared to 2010.

Total house­hold con­sump­tion of olive oil for the month of October was 37.17 mil­lion liters, down from 37.59 mil­lion in October 2010. In the case of sun­flower oil, con­sump­tion was 13.00 mil­lion liters, down from 13.05 mil­lion liters.

Olive oil exports are increas­ingly impor­tant for Spain, which already sends 60 per­cent of its pro­duc­tion abroad. The good news for its pro­duc­ers — suf­fer­ing a pro­longed pric­ing cri­sis — is that the International Olive Council expects global con­sump­tion to rise 3.2 per­cent in 2011/12. That’s enough to soak up fore­cast world pro­duc­tion of nearly 3.08 mil­lion tons, of which Spain is expected to pro­duce about 45 per­cent.



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