Producers in Portugal Anticipate Another Bumper Harvest

As the har­vest gets under­way, olive farm­ers and millers in Portugal antic­i­pate the coun­try will achieve its sec­ond-high­est olive oil pro­duc­tion in the 2024/25 crop year.

According to Mariana Matos, the sec­re­tary gen­eral of Casa do Azeite, a pro­ducer asso­ci­a­tion, Portugal is expected to pro­duce between 170,000 and 190,000 met­ric tons of olive oil in the 2024/25 crop year.

If it comes to fruition, the har­vest would sig­nif­i­cantly exceed the five-year aver­age of 146,060 tons but fin­ish below the record-high 206,200 tons recorded in 2021/22.

“The cam­paign has just begun, but a recov­ery in pro­duc­tion is expected in the more tra­di­tional olive grow­ing regions, given that the cli­mate was more favor­able through­out the pro­duc­tion cycle,” Matos said.

“Specifically, it rained more than in the pre­vi­ous two years,” she added. ​“The dif­fer­ence may not be so sig­nif­i­cant regard­ing the mod­ern and irri­gated olive groves.”

From the tra­di­tional steep slope groves in Trás-os-Montes to the super-high-den­sity plan­ta­tions in Alentejo, pro­duc­ers across Europe’s fourth-largest olive oil pro­ducer con­firmed they antic­i­pate pro­duc­tion will remain steady or increase.

However, some warned that too much rain dur­ing the har­vest could result in lower-than-expected olive oil pro­duc­tion and impact qual­ity.

Alberto Serralha, the chief exec­u­tive of Sociedade Agrícola Ouro Vegetal (SAOV) in cen­tral Portugal, said the com­pany started har­vest­ing on September 24^th and is expected to com­plete it by November 10^th.

While SAOV and its part­ners were har­vest­ing more olives, he said lower oil accu­mu­la­tion in the fruit was not nec­es­sar­ily lead­ing to more olive oil pro­duc­tion.

“The weather has been cooler than last year, help­ing qual­ity,” he said. ​“Still, rain­fall has made us lose 12 days of har­vest, sig­nif­i­cantly dis­turb­ing our oil sales and milling oper­a­tion.”

Still, Serralha said pro­duc­tion is expected to increase in the wider region. ​“The pro­duc­tion is higher than last year,” he said.

“There are chal­lenges with qual­ity, though, as 12 days of per­sis­tent rain­fall trig­gered anthrac­nose, affect­ing the most sus­cep­ti­ble vari­eties,” Serralha added. ​“Those who delayed the har­vest are now fac­ing qual­ity prob­lems and fruit losses on the ground.”

He char­ac­ter­ized the esti­mate of 180,000 tons as opti­mistic, adding that the con­flu­ence of many fac­tors in Portugal makes fore­cast­ing the final yield a highly spec­u­la­tive prac­tice.

“It is hard to esti­mate a farm [let alone] a coun­try,” Serralha said. ​“The per­ma­nent expan­sion of olive groves in Portugal makes it even harder. Considering the low oil yields and the pro­duc­tiv­ity decline of older super-high-den­sity orchards, 180,000 tons is within the range of my most opti­mistic sce­nario.”

“If anthrac­nose hits hard, it can end sim­i­larly to last year,” when Portugal pro­duced 157,600 tons, he added. ​“Despite the sig­nif­i­cant new areas com­ing online every year, this will be the third sea­son below the record in 2019.”

In the north­ern region of Trás-os-Montes, farm­ers and millers antic­i­pate a mod­est pro­duc­tion increase due to plen­ti­ful win­ter rain­fall, which has bro­ken the country’s his­toric drought.

Joaquim Moreira, a spokesman for Acushla, said the com­pany antic­i­pates olive oil pro­duc­tion will increase by 15 per­cent. He said newly planted groves are enter­ing matu­rity, along with the rain.

“In Trás-os-Montes, the increase will not be so strong – prob­a­bly just five per­cent more than the pre­vi­ous year,” he said. ​“We had worse cli­mate con­di­tions.”

Moreira added that he expects pro­duc­tion to con­tinue trend­ing up at Acushla and Portugal as newly planted groves enter matu­rity.

Producers also expect another good har­vest in the vast south­ern region of Alentejo, which is respon­si­ble for the over­whelm­ing major­ity of Portuguese olive oil pro­duc­tion. However, not all pro­duc­ers expect this year’s yield to exceed last year’s.

“The sit­u­a­tion is pretty sim­i­lar to last year,” said Manuel Norte Santo, the export man­ager of Est. Manuel Silva Torrado. ​“However, in tra­di­tional olive groves, this late rain cre­ated some dif­fi­cul­ties with pests, and some olives began to fall.”

Norte Santo antic­i­pates that the com­pany, which boasts 200 hectares of groves and pur­chases olives from other farm­ers, will pro­duce con­sis­tently with its super-high-den­sity groves.

“In tra­di­tional cul­ti­va­tion, there is greater volatil­ity, but this year, the fore­cast should be like last year,” he added. ​“However, as the price of olive oil will be lower than last year, some pro­duc­ers with small areas of cul­ti­va­tion may not har­vest their olives, caus­ing the num­bers to drop slightly.”

As a result, Norte Santo agreed with Serralha that the cur­rent pro­duc­tion fore­cast may be opti­mistic and said the pic­ture would become more appar­ent as the har­vest con­tin­ues.

Elsewhere in Alentejo, 4 C Azeites chief exec­u­tive Francisco Lopes said his har­vest is already under­way and expects pro­duc­tion to be sim­i­lar to pre­vi­ous years. The com­pany pro­duced 6,900 liters of olive oil in the 2023/24 crop year.

“In Alentejo, the year looks promis­ing with vol­umes some­what higher than in 2023 thanks to the increased areas planted with super-inten­sive olive groves that will come into pro­duc­tion,” he said.

While some pro­duc­ers in Alentejo antic­i­pate a sim­i­lar har­vest, oth­ers have expe­ri­enced a pro­duc­tion increase as new olive groves mature and other groves enter an ​‘on-year’ in the olive grove’s nat­ural alter­nate bear­ing cycle.

Teresa Teixeira, the assis­tant direc­tor of Olivum, an olive farmer asso­ci­a­tion, con­firmed that its mem­bers expect a 20 per­cent pro­duc­tion increase com­pared to last year.

“In the past year, the olive oil pro­duc­tion of Olivum mem­bers was 105,000 tons,” she said. ​“This year, we pre­dict that the pro­duc­tion will be in the order of 125,000 tons. So, 180,000 tons is more or less what we had pre­dicted for the national pro­duc­tion.”

While farm­ers and millers enjoyed favor­able con­di­tions lead­ing up to the har­vest, Matos warned that pro­duc­ers would likely face a famil­iar chal­lenge as the har­vest pro­gressed.

“During the har­vest, one of the main chal­lenges is the issue of labor, which can be a prob­lem in cer­tain regions, espe­cially in the more tra­di­tional olive groves… where mechan­i­cal har­vest­ing is impos­si­ble,” Matos said. ​“In Portugal, these olive groves are found in the north­ern and cen­tral regions.”

“In mod­ern olive groves in the Alqueva region, in Alentejo, these prob­lems are not so press­ing, as they are irri­gated, and har­vest­ing is com­pletely mech­a­nized,” she added.

Along with the lack of labor, Teixeira added that the pro­lif­er­a­tion of high-den­sity and super-high-den­sity groves has resulted in an expo­nen­tial increase in olive pomace pro­duc­tion with­out a cor­re­spond­ing increase in infra­struc­ture to treat and dis­pose of the olive oil pro­duc­tion byprod­uct.

“In the past years, there was a huge increase in pro­duc­tion, and the extrac­tion indus­tries don’t have the capac­ity to receive all the olive pomace,” she said. ​“Another prob­lem is the lack of spe­cial­ized labor for new tech­nol­ogy.”