World olive oil production could increase by 23% by 2024/25

According to the advance prepared by the Italian Institute for Agri-Food Statistics (ISMEA), based on preliminary data from the International Olive Oil Council (IOC) and the European Commission itself, world olive oil production for the 2024/25 season, which officially began on 1 October, could increase by 23% and by some 588,000 tonnes compared to the previous season, which stood at just 2.51 million.

In this way, there would be sufficient supply to meet world consumption demand, bearing in mind that prices at origin and destination are expected to fall due to higher production, returning to the levels of between 3-3.1 million tonnes of previous seasons.

This increase will be due to the improvement in the forecasts for the mill olive harvest in most of the main producing countries, such as Spain, Turkey, Tunisia and Greece, while Italy will once again be overtaken, according to these forecasts, not only by Greece but also by third country producers, such as Turkey and Tunisia, which are becoming increasingly important on the world market.

By main countries, Spain could obtain 1.35 million tonnes, an increase of 58.3% and almost half a million tonnes compared to the very low crop (853,000 t) of the previous season 2023/24. For the moment, this is a more optimistic figure and higher than that estimated (1.26 Mt) by the Ministry of Agriculture in the previous week with data from the producing Autonomous Regions.

In any case, our country would obtain 43.5% of all the world's olive oil production, according to the data provided by the Italian ISMEA.

Turkey on the rise

Turkey would be the world's second largest producer in the 2024/25 season, with 340,000 tonnes, surpassing Tunisia, and becoming one of the world's main producers with an upward trend. Its production would increase by 61.9% and by 130,000 tonnes compared to last season.

In third place would be Tunisia, the main supplier to the EU market, thanks to its trade agreement with the EU on Inward Processing Traffic (IPT), which allows for tariff-free exports of raw material (olive oil in bulk) for processing and packaging in the EU, provided that the product is then exported to other third countries.

The Maghreb country would obtain some 315,000 tonnes of olive oil, 57.5 percent and 115,000 tonnes more than the poor harvest of the previous season, which was greatly affected by the drought and the poor quality of the North African olive groves.

As we have already mentioned, Greece would once again overtake Italy in the production ranking by recovering its production potential to 224,000 tonnes, 61.3% and 95,000 tonnes more than in 2023/24, thanks to the improvement in its meteorology in the crucial months for the olive grove.

The exception in the EU would be, once again, the transalpine country, where the ISMEA forecasts just 224,000 tonnes of olive oil, 32% and 104,000 tonnes less than in 2023/24, a volume that is due to more factors than the normal alternation (vecería) of the crop and weather incidents, which is also the case.

Finally, neighbouring Portugal could slightly improve its olive oil production, raising it to 160,000 tonnes, 1.3% and 2,000 tonnes more, a volume that will end up supplying a significant part of the Spanish market, given that the Portuguese country is one of our main suppliers of this product.