`US Surpasses Spain as Second-Largest Olive Oil Consumer - Olive Oil Times
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US Surpasses Spain as Second-Largest Olive Oil Consumer

By Daniel Dawson
Mar. 6, 2024 23:58 UTC

The United States became the world’s sec­ond-largest con­sumer of olive oil for the first time in 2023, over­tak­ing Spain.

According to data from the European Commission, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the International Olive Council, the U.S. con­sumed 375,000 tons of olive oil in 2023.

It would not sur­prise me that the U.S. could become the world’s largest con­sumer by 2030- Joseph R. Profaci, exec­u­tive direc­tor, NAOOA

Italy remained the world’s top olive oil con­sumer with 410,000 tons, while Spain fell to third at 300,000 tons.

Juan Vilar, chief exec­u­tive of agri­cul­tural and olive oil con­sul­tancy Vilcon, said a com­bi­na­tion of the grow­ing pres­ence of olive oil in the U.S. and the sharp pro­duc­tion decline expe­ri­enced in Spain in the past two har­vests have fueled the trend.

See Also:Inflation Cuts Premium Food Sales in U.S., but Not EVOO

“Americans are increas­ingly con­cerned about olive oil and more famil­iar because they are also olive oil pro­duc­ers,” he said.

Vilar added that many of the world’s largest olive oil com­pa­nies have expanded aggres­sively in the U.S. mar­ket, con­duct­ing con­sumer sur­veys to deter­mine the organolep­tic pro­files Americans seek.

“Most com­pa­nies from out­side the United States are adapt­ing to the pro­file of American con­sump­tion pat­terns, and there­fore, this has also caused an increase in con­sump­tion,” he said.

Since the onset of the Covid-19 pan­demic, con­sumers in the United States have also paid increas­ing atten­tion to olive oil’s health ben­e­fits, which Vilar said has fur­ther con­tributed to the trend of increas­ing American con­sump­tion.

Juxtaposed with increas­ing U.S. con­sump­tion, Spaniards are buy­ing less olive oil after poor har­vests in the 2022/23 and 2023/24 crop years con­tributed to unprece­dented price increases.

“Due to the price increases, Spanish con­sump­tion fell about 47 per­cent,” Vilar said. ​“Spain con­sumed about 260,000 fewer tons of olive oil in 2023.”

Joseph R. Profaci, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the North American Olive Oil Association (NAOOA), a trade group, said U.S. con­sumers view olive oil dif­fer­ently than their south­ern European coun­ter­parts.

He has a the­ory that olive oil con­sump­tion is widely a con­scious deci­sion for U.S. con­sumers rather than a cul­tural inher­i­tance as it is in Mediterranean coun­tries.

“The dif­fer­ence is that in the U.S., the con­sumer base (at least mil­len­ni­als and boomers who did not grow up in house­holds using olive oil) made an inten­tional choice to start using olive oil for health and or taste rea­sons,” he said.

“In Spain and else­where, using olive oil wasn’t an inten­tional choice for their con­sumer base; it was part of their DNA,” Profaci added. ​“For this rea­son, I believe that the con­sumers in tra­di­tional coun­tries, when faced with higher prices all of a sud­den, are much more likely than their American coun­ter­parts to switch to some­thing else.”

Vilar agreed, point­ing out that extra vir­gin olive oil prices at retail in the U.S. already exceeded $10 per liter, and have not increased as much due to dif­fer­ing pric­ing dynam­ics.

“For a major part of the U.S. mar­ket (i.e., pri­vate label, which com­prises 40 per­cent of all retail sales), until very recently prices have not gone up much at all as a result of con­tract pric­ing,” Profaci added.

Along with the delay to the kind of price rises expe­ri­enced in Europe, many U.S. con­sumers are in a bet­ter finan­cial sit­u­a­tion than European con­sumers, allow­ing them the flex­i­bil­ity to pay higher prices, in gen­eral.

While the U.S. may con­sume more olive oil than Spain in 2023 and 2024, Vilar believes this trend will reverse after the next bumper har­vest in Spain, when pro­duc­tion returns to its pre­vi­ous aver­age of about 1.4 mil­lion tons.

“The United States will con­sume more and more olive oil, but what will hap­pen is that when there is a large har­vest, there will be a price drop in Spain, and con­sump­tion will recover,” Vilar said.

“It is very likely that from this increase in pro­duc­tion in a year or two, Spain will once again be the sec­ond largest con­sumer of olive oil in the world,” he added.

However, Profaci, Vilar and other experts pre­dict that the United States will con­sis­tently con­sume more olive oil than Spain and pos­si­bly over­take Italy as the world’s largest olive oil con­sumer by the end of the decade.

“It would not sur­prise me that the U.S. could become the world’s largest con­sumer by 2030,” Profaci said. ​“If we are suc­cess­ful in estab­lish­ing an olive oil research and pro­mo­tion pro­gram under the United States Department of Agriculture, I would bet it will hap­pen before then.”

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