Demand for Organic Olive Oil Growing Globally

Organic olive oil is gain­ing trac­tion in inter­na­tional mar­kets. A grow­ing vol­ume of olive oil trade now comes from organic pro­duc­tion as organic olive farms are also expand­ing sig­nif­i­cantly.

Allied Market Research shows that the global organic olive oil mar­ket was val­ued at $933 mil­lion in 2021. According to Polaris Market Research, the olive oil mar­ket was val­ued at $14 bil­lion that year.

In 2031, the organic olive oil mar­ket is expected to rise to $2.2 bil­lion, with an annual growth of close to 9 per­cent.

A large share of organic olive oil is exported in bulk in a busi­ness-to-busi­ness (B2B) envi­ron­ment. By 2031, B2B organic olive oil trade is expected to exceed $803 mil­lion. In 2021, it sat at $357 mil­lion.

Experts cite ris­ing con­sumer aware­ness of healthy food as one of the dri­vers of increas­ing sales for organic food prod­ucts.

“Consumers who are well-informed of the advan­tages of organic farm­ing and the qual­ity of organic pro­duce are also more will­ing to pay the higher price of organic olive oil,” Nikos Renieris, owner at El Renieris, an olive oil pro­ducer and bot­tler in Crete, Greece, told Olive Oil Times.

Public poli­cies also come into play. One exam­ple is the European Union’s strat­egy to expand organic farm­ing, to con­vert 25 per­cent of all farm­land in the bloc to organic prac­tices by 2030.

Producing coun­tries, such as Tunisia, whose exports con­sti­tute a large por­tion of its olive pro­duc­tion, are report­ing sub­stan­tial increases in organic olive oil trade as well.

Hamed Daly Hassen, chief exec­u­tive of Tunisia’s National Olive Oil Office, told Olive Oil Times that organic olive oil accounted for 44 per­cent of all Tunisian pro­duc­tion in 2021, exceed­ing 100,000 tons. In 2012, organic olive oil was less than 10 per­cent of all pro­duc­tion.

The ris­ing share of organic olive oil pro­duc­tion is due to grow­ing inter­na­tional demand, mainly from devel­oped coun­tries.

“For sure, the more eco­nom­i­cally advanced mar­kets are those that are dri­ving sales of organic olive oil,” said Renieris, adding that organic olive oil sales are ris­ing annu­ally on Crete.

Still, accord­ing to exporters and importers, organic olive oil sales growth is only par­tially related to the demand trend.

“The German extra vir­gin olive oil mar­ket is strong, and the share of organic olive oil is grow­ing as well,” Massimo Boraso, the chief exec­u­tive of the Italian e‑commerce olive oil plat­form, OlivYou, told Olive Oil Times. ​“The German con­sumer is even more proac­tive in look­ing for organic olive oil than the Italian one.”

While ris­ing prices and per­sis­tent infla­tion have resulted in a pre­dicted decline in global olive oil con­sump­tion, the German olive oil mar­ket has shown sig­nif­i­cant growth.

According to the International Olive Council, olive oil con­sump­tion in the coun­try rose from 60,500 tons in the 2012/13 crop year to an expected 88,000 tons in 2022/23.

“Considering that we only sell high-end extra vir­gin olive oils, organic olive oil sales are grow­ing through­out a con­sumer base that is highly inter­ested in find­ing the right olive oil but also in try­ing out new olive oils,” Boraso said.

In devel­oped economies such as the United Kingdom, the suc­cess of organic olive oil goes hand-in-hand with the pop­u­lar­ity of extra vir­gin olive oil among con­sumers.

“We have seen con­sumers’ aware­ness chang­ing with our high-end prod­uct retail part­ners in the U.K.,” Yacine Amor, importer and CEO at Artisan Olive Oil, told Olive Oil Times. ​“The Covid-19 pan­demic played a big role, boost­ing home cook­ing for quite a long time, and health-con­scious con­sumers started pay­ing way more atten­tion to olive oil and good qual­ity olive oils.”

While organic olive oil found new pas­sion­ate cus­tomers dur­ing the pan­demic, cur­rent eco­nomic con­di­tions have changed sig­nif­i­cantly, alter­ing U.K.’s mar­ket land­scape.

“As infla­tion bites, fam­i­lies have changed their pri­or­i­ties. They need to cope with a chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tion,” Amor said. ​“High-qual­ity olive oil and organic olive oil are now tak­ing a hit.”

He added that extra bureau­cratic hur­dles imposed by Brexit, the U.K.’s deci­sion to leave the E.U., had also affected the avail­abil­ity of organic olive oil.

“If you enter a super­mar­ket now, you can see how the choices of olive oil avail­able to con­sumers have halved since two years ago,” Amor said.

“And the same hap­pens to organic olive oil and organic prod­ucts in gen­eral, shunned by fam­i­lies try­ing to save money and retail­ers who pro­mote bas­ket-pro­tec­tion strate­gies for their cus­tomers,” he added.

Along with the U.K. and Germany, Bosaro said he had noticed a grow­ing inter­est in organic olive oil in other parts of north­ern Europe, includ­ing Sweden and Estonia.

Across the Atlantic, the United States has become one of the world’s largest olive oil con­sumers and importers over the past two decades.

International Olive Council data show that U.S. olive oil imports rose from 193,000 tons in 2002/03 to an antic­i­pated 360,000 tons in 2022/23, approx­i­mately 36 per­cent of global olive oil imports. The largest quan­ti­ties of extra vir­gin olive oils are imported from Italy, Spain and Tunisia.

In 2013, the U.S. Department of Agriculture esti­mated that organic olive oil rep­re­sented one-tenth of the value of for­eign olive oil sales in the U.S.

USDA data show that between 2013 and 2021, the value of U.S. organic imports increased five-fold, ris­ing from $500 mil­lion to $2.7 bil­lion. The USDA also expects these fig­ures to con­tinue ris­ing in the future.

Given the piv­otal role played by the U.S. as a global olive oil importer, the ris­ing demand for organic olive oil will likely have rip­ple effects through­out the sec­tor.

The inter­est of importers and con­sumers in organic olive oil also affects pro­duc­ing coun­tries.

In Italy, 12 per­cent of the country’s organic farm­land is home to olive groves. According to the Institute of Services for the Agricultural and Food Market (Ismea), organic olives grow on approx­i­mately 243,000 hectares in the coun­try.

In its lat­est report, Ismea said the amount of land ded­i­cated to organic olive grow­ing dou­bled from 2010 to 2019. Since then, though, the growth has slowed to 1.5 per­cent per year.

The lat­est E.U. reg­u­la­tions pro­mot­ing organic farm­ing will result in a resur­gence in organic olive grow­ing.

In Spain, the world’s largest olive oil-pro­duc­ing coun­try by a wide mar­gin, the num­ber of organic olive groves con­tin­ues to rise across the coun­try.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, land ded­i­cated to organic olive groves increased by 16 per­cent in 2021. Now organic olive groves now cover 256,510 hectares in Spain, an area larger than Luxemburg.

The largest increase in organic olive grow­ing came from Andalusia, respon­si­ble for most of Spain’s olive oil pro­duc­tion. Organic olive grove cov­er­age rose by nearly one-third in the region from 88,691 hectares in 2020 to 117,380 hectares in 2021.

• USDA
• Produce Pay