Producers in Uruguay See Awards Fueling Exports, Local Olive Oil Culture

Uruguay’s two largest olive oil pro­duc­ers are com­ing off a superb 2023 and look­ing ahead to 2024.

Maldonado-based Agroland and Rocha-based Nuevo Manantial pro­duced more than half of the small South American country’s olive oil yield while com­bin­ing to earn two Gold Awards and a Silver Award at the 2023 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

Agroland, which pro­duced the Colinas de Garzón brand, earned a pair of Gold Awards for its medium-inten­sity blends. Meanwhile, Nuevo Manantial earned a Silver Award for its Olivares de Rocha brand, which is also a medium blend.

“For us, who are in a very small coun­try, hav­ing this inter­na­tional recog­ni­tion is very good,” Victor Rodriguez, the head of pro­duc­tion for Agroland, told Olive Oil Times. ​“It fills us with pride and opens a path for us to any mar­ket we may want to enter.”

According to its olive sec­tor cen­sus pub­lished in December 2023, the Uruguayan Ministry of Ranching, Agriculture and Fisheries said the coun­try pro­duced about 2,047 tons of extra vir­gin olive oil in the 2022/23 crop year. Of that total, Agroland and Nuevo Manantial were respon­si­ble for 1,200 tons.

While the har­vest fell sig­nif­i­cantly below the orig­i­nal esti­mate of a record-high 3,000 tons, it exceeded the pre­vi­ous yield of 1,544 tons pro­duced in the 2021/22 crop year.

The two com­pa­nies are respon­si­ble for most Uruguayan exports, ship­ping their oils to neigh­bor­ing Brazil and, more recently, the United States.

While the lat­est data have not yet been pub­lished, the Ministry of Ranching, Agriculture and Fisheries said the coun­try exported 530 tons of extra vir­gin olive oil val­ued at $2.4 mil­lion between March 2022 and April 2023.

Due to the pre­vi­ous crop year’s bumper har­vest, which ended in early August, exports are expected to increase.

According to Rodriguez, win­ning awards at the NYIOOC helped put Uruguay, which has only been pro­duc­ing olive oil com­mer­cially for 20 years, on the world map.

“In mar­kets like the United States, Uruguay is known for meat, dairy prod­ucts and grains, but not for olive oil,” he said. ​“These awards help us estab­lish our­selves as an olive oil brand, know­ing that we come from a coun­try not known for olive oil pro­duc­tion.”

Along with help­ing the brand stand out in fledg­ling export mar­kets, Rodriguez said the awards also help encour­age Uruguayans to pur­chase and con­sume locally-pro­duced extra vir­gin olive oil.

A 2022 study from the Ministry of Ranching, Agriculture and Fisheries found that annual olive oil and olive pomace oil con­sump­tion sits around 1,700 tons – about 500 grams per capita per annum – of which 40 per­cent is locally pro­duced and 60 per­cent is imported.

“The awards are a way to encour­age con­sump­tion of locally-pro­duced olive oil, let­ting the Uruguayan con­sumers know that this national pro­duce is of very high qual­ity,” he said.

Many olive oils imported from Europe arrive in Uruguay in less-than-ideal con­di­tions, hav­ing spent at least a month cross­ing the trop­ics and equa­tor inside metal ship­ping con­tain­ers. If the exporter has not paid extra for a cli­mate-con­trolled con­tainer, the oil inside has almost cer­tainly been dam­aged by expo­sure to high tem­per­a­tures.

According to a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from a well-known European olive oil exporter, tem­per­a­tures can exceed 60 ºC for mul­ti­ple weeks in non-cli­mate-con­trolled con­tain­ers that are trav­el­ing dur­ing the sum­mer or through the trop­ics.

“Nationally-pro­duced olive oils have almost cer­tainly been stored in supe­rior con­di­tions to any­thing that is imported from Europe,” Rodriguez said.

He believes that edu­ca­tion is also key to cul­ti­vat­ing a national olive oil cul­ture, applaud­ing the efforts of Asolur, the national pro­ducer asso­ci­a­tion, to do just that.

He cited olive oil-spe­cific aisles in sev­eral national super­mar­ket chains, which have been demon­strated to increase sales, and olive oil-spe­cific trade events as a few edu­ca­tional efforts start­ing to bear fruit.

“Chefs and nutri­tion­ists go to these events and talk about the health ben­e­fits of olive oil and how to cook with olive oil, empha­siz­ing that it is not just for salad,” Rodriguez said. ​“The chal­lenge is to carry out cam­paigns to edu­cate peo­ple about the con­sump­tion of olive oil and the ben­e­fits it has.”

Along with encour­ag­ing domes­tic con­sump­tion, Rodriguez said one of the most con­sis­tent chal­lenges fac­ing pro­duc­ers is how to grow healthy olives in Uruguay’s humid cli­mate.

“In Uruguay, there is a lot of humid­ity. As a result, many dis­eases and types of fun­gus pro­lif­er­ate. To com­bat these and pre­vent them from dam­ag­ing the olives and, there­fore, the oil, we need to spray the trees,” he said. ​“However, we have to be very care­ful to make sure there is no residue on the olives when they are har­vested and turned into olive oil.”

This means the final phy­tosan­i­tary appli­ca­tion must occur more than 40 days before the har­vest to ensure the chem­i­cals have dis­si­pated before the olives are picked, washed and milled. Additionally, pro­duc­ers look­ing to export to the United States have a lim­ited list of chem­i­cals approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

According to Rodriguez, the stakes are high; if any exported extra vir­gin olive oil tests pos­i­tive with resid­u­als of a non-approved phy­tosan­i­tary prod­uct, the com­pany will have dif­fi­culty get­ting per­mis­sion to export to the U.S. again. ​“This is the biggest chal­lenge that we have every year since we want to cap­ture mar­ket share in the United States,” he said.

Looking ahead to 2024, observers expect the com­ing har­vest to be lower than the pre­vi­ous one due to the nat­ural alter­nate bear­ing cycle of the olive tree.

“Olive trees always have alter­nate bear­ing years,” Rodriguez said. ​“What we can do as a com­pany to mit­i­gate drop off is to prune right away. As soon as the har­vest fin­ishes, we prune the olive trees so they can con­cen­trate their energy on pro­duc­ing fruit for next year.”

Along with prun­ing, Rodriguez said pro­vid­ing the trees with the nec­es­sary nutri­ents also ensures that the alter­na­tion between ​‘on-years’ and ​‘off-years’ is as low as pos­si­ble. To do this as effi­ciently as pos­si­ble, Agroland keeps track of how much fruit each tree bore.

“If we know that a tree yielded 40 kilo­grams on year, the agron­o­mists know how many grams of fer­til­izer to use to pro­vide the tree with the nutri­ents it needs to pro­duce this quan­tity again,” Rodriguez said.

However, he acknowl­edged that the cli­mate will be the most sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor to fore­cast the com­ing year’s pro­duc­tion.

Uruguay is cur­rently expe­ri­enc­ing the impacts of El Niño, which has resulted in a sig­nif­i­cant amount of rain in the spring, help­ing to break the country’s his­toric drought.

While the rain has refilled rivers, reser­voirs and aquifers, it means that the teams of agron­o­mists at Agroland and Nuevo Manantial will need to be wary of pests and fungi that thrive in warm and humid weather, espe­cially as they look to repeat their suc­cess at the 2024 NYIOOC.

• Uruguayan Ministry of Ranching, Agriculture and Fisheries