« This year’s olive oil harvest is not as good as the one of last season but it is not catastrophic either, » said Abdelmajid Azzar, chairman of the farmers’s UTAP union.
« There is decline in some olive oil producing regions and rise in other areas.That makes olive oil production this year at around 200,000 tons, » Azzar added in an interview.
Between 60 and 70 percent of Tunisia’s olive oil is exported to the EU. Tunisian olive oil is also sold to over 60 markets around the world including the US, Canada, France, Russia, China and a few Arab countries under dozens of different brand names.
Last year was the first time Tunisia reached the second place in world olive oil output when its olive oil yields hit 300,000 tons, more than 400 percent increase from 70,000 tons garnered in the previous season.
Spain’s production has been estimated at 600,000 tons last year, putting it in first world producer again despite its poor olive production
While Italy and Spain had experienced an exceptionally poor harvests because of bad weather and olive fly infestations, Tunisia has had an exceptionally good yield.
Spain and Italy account together 70 percent of the world’s olive oil output.
As a result, olive oil prices had soared, surpassing global inflation rate for packaged foods by 3.7 percent last year when Oil World reported also rported that the price of Spanish extra virigin olive oil hit its highest level since April 2006, at $4,272 a ton.
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