Olive oil purchases fall by 25%

(ANSA) - Bari, December 1 - Olive oil purchases in Italy have fallen by 25% in the last ten years with per capita consumption now at 9.2 kg per year, farmers' association Coldiretti said on the national day for Italian extra-virgin olive oil Tuesday.
    This compares to 10.4% in Spain and 16.3% in Greece. "Recent scandals concerning fraudulent oil have had a negative impact, fuelling mistrust and the spread of low-quality imported products that disorientate consumers," Coldiretti president Roberto Moncalvo said.
    "This is an intolerable situation for a country like Italy which is the only one in the world to have 533 varieties of olives and 43 olive oils with European Union protection," he added. This year's production is expected to be 46% up on last year, when the olive harvest was extremely poor.
    This translates into an absolute value of approximately 299,000 tonnes of olive oil, according to regional estimates. People wanting to buy a good olive oil should beware of products costing less than 6-7 euros per litre as this does not even cover the production costs, Coldiretti said. Olive oil imports from Tunisia rose by 734% in the first seven months of the year, according to Istat figures. This makes the north African country the third biggest supplier to Italy after Spain and Greece. "The result is that Italy in 2015 remains the biggest global importer of olive oil despite an upturn in national production," Coldiretti said. The situation could be compounded by the introduction of a new annual duty free tariff rate quota of 35,000 tonnes until 2017 for Tunisia's exports of olive oil to the EU, on top of the 57,000 tonnes existing under a EU-Tunisia association agreement.
    Part of the problem concerns lack of transparency, products made using a blend of oils obtained from other countries not always indicating this on the bottle label, Coldiretti said.