Olive Oil: A Global Market Finding New Balance

A Supply Cycle Closing

The 2024/25 campaign marks a clear inflection point for a sector that had just weathered two particularly difficult seasons. According to the International Olive Council (IOC), global olive oil consumption reached 3,215,000 tonnes in 2024/25, up 15.3% from the previous campaign, a sign that world demand, temporarily compressed by record prices, is catching its breath again. Projections for 2025/26 anticipate a further 1% increase to 3,248,000 tonnes. Over thirty years, global consumption has nearly doubled since the 1990/91 campaign, a trajectory that illustrates olive oil's relentless march beyond its historic Mediterranean strongholds.

This recovery in consumption is the direct consequence of improved supply availability. Production, after the climatic disruptions that had hit Spanish and Italian harvests in 2022/23 and 2023/24, is rebounding across major basins. Spain, which alone accounts for nearly 40% of global production in a normal year, has returned to harvest levels more in line with its potential. Greece, Tunisia, Morocco, and Turkey have also contributed to rebuilding available volumes, even as climate variability remains a permanent factor in a sector dependent on winter rainfall and spring temperatures.

The Price Correction: Necessary but Partial

The January-February 2026 period confirms a downward price movement after the historic peaks reached in 2023 and 2024. According to IOC data, the price of extra virgin olive oil at the Bari (Italy) market stands at 650 euros per 100 kilograms in early 2026, a correction of 30.9% year-on-year. At Jaen, Spain's main reference hub, the price reaches 407 euros per 100 kilograms, down 2.5% on the year. In Chania, Crete, the drop is 5.5% at 430 euros per 100 kilograms.

This correction is real but must be interpreted carefully. Current levels remain substantially higher than those observed before the shortage shock of 2022-2023. The decline does not signal a return to cheap olive oil: it means that market participants, both producers and importers, have absorbed part of the shock, and that negotiating margins are gradually rebuilding. For premium and ultra-premium categories, controlled designation oils, first cold-pressed oils from identified estates, the correction is far less pronounced: the scarcity of excellence remains structural, independent of ordinary harvest cycles.

On the trade side, global olive oil imports grew 15.1% in October and November 2025 compared to the same period the previous year, with the notable exception of China and the United States, which registered declines. This divergence between markets illustrates the fragility of demand in countries where olive oil culture is still recent, and the solidity of markets where it is already embedded as a dietary standard.

The Geography of Consumption is Being Redrawn

The most structurally significant phenomenon of the past three decades remains the decentering of global consumption. The European Union, which represented over 70% of world demand in the mid-2000s, now accounts for only around 45% of volumes consumed in recent campaigns, according to the IOC. This share remains dominant, but the growth dynamic now belongs to emerging markets: North America, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and increasingly, the countries of the post-Soviet space.

The olive tree does not grow in Russia. This geographical fact underpins a simple economic reality: the Russian market is a near-100% importer for all categories of olive oil. It has no domestic production competing in this segment, no domestic substitute industry. Olive oil is, by construction, an imported product in Russia, and is perceived as such, that is to say, as a marker of quality, Mediterranean openness, and standard of living.

Russian-speaking demand for premium food products has undergone remarkable development over the past decade. Fine-food stores in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, upmarket retail chains, and restaurants with international menus have developed a culture of origin products, accompanied by a buyer's capacity to distinguish a standard oil from an estate oil, a PDO from a generic supermarket product. This consumer sophistication is not anecdotal: it defines the framework in which premium producers now have every reason to position themselves.

The AknoTrade Reading

The convergence of several factors creates a favorable entry window today for premium producers seeking to establish themselves durably in the Russian market.

The correction in wholesale prices facilitates negotiations with Russian importers and distributors, whose margins had been squeezed during the period of high prices. A producer entering a commercial conversation in 2026 arrives in a more open context than in 2023 or 2024, without having to sacrifice premium positioning: the price difference between a generic oil and a terroir oil remains perfectly legible and justifiable for the target consumer.

The recomposition of global supply geography also opens new doors. Origins that remained little-known on the Russian market, whether Greek producers from Crete or the Peloponnese, Tunisian oils with high polyphenol content, Argentine oils from the Mendoza region, or Chinese producers from Sichuan or Yunnan now beginning to export significant volumes, can today legitimately claim a place in the Russian premium assortment. The concept of olive variety as an equivalent to grape variety in wine, Picual, Koroneiki, Arbequina, Coratina, Aglandau, is gradually being absorbed by Russian professional buyers, opening the way to categorization by origin and sensory profile.

For AknoVerde, the 2025/26 campaign represents a structuring year: identifying producers capable of guaranteeing consistency and traceability, negotiating terms suited to an import market that values supply reliability as much as intrinsic product quality, and building with Russian partners a shared language around harvest-year freshness, the bitterness and pungency characteristic of polyphenol-rich oils, and harvest date as a quality indicator equivalent to what vintage represents in wine.

Olive oil has no future in Russia as a mass-market product. It does, however, have a considerable future as a product of distinction, in a market with no local production, a consumer growing in expertise, and a premium segment that remains largely underexploited by specialized players. That is precisely where the opportunity lies.