NEW YORK – Spanish olive oil “dethroned” that of Italian origin for the first time in the United States, the third consumer market in the world (340,000 tons per year), thanks to an enormous export growth of 25 percent in the last year, according to sources of the Spanish Institute of Foreign Trade (ICEX).
On the shelves of American supermarkets the number of brands with an Italian name is still overwhelming, and the oils with a clearly Spanish origin are almost testimonial, as is the case with those from Turkey, Tunisia or Morocco.
This is explained because the olive oil that Spain sells in bulk to the US -and which until 2021 was more than bottled- ends up in bottles of US brands, sometimes white brands from well-known supermarkets and other times in brands that have an Italianate or Greek, as they are the two communities with the greatest demographic weight and with which olive oil has traditionally been associated.
THE END OF THE “TRUMP TARIFF” HAS BEEN DETERMINING
In 2019, the Donald Trump Administration, in the midst of the Airbus/Boeing trade war, imposed a 25% tariff on olive oil, in addition to cheese and olives, to which the European Union (EU) responded by imposing other tariffs. similar to US products in 2020; Finally, in 2021, the World Trade Organization ruled in favor of the EU and both parties abolished these tariff measures.
As a result, Spanish olive oil took off in 2022 to reach a sales figure of 170,383 tons, ahead of oils from Italy (124,256 tons) and a great difference from Tunisia, Turkey and Greece.
The current Spanish share in US imports of “green gold” is 41% in volume and 38% in value, and oils from almost all regions of Spain and all the classic varieties of Spanish soil (picual, arbequina, hojiblanca, etc.).
Jeffrey Shaw, from the office of the Institute of Foreign Trade of Spain (ICEX) in New York, explains that Spain’s positioning process goes back a long way and has been possible thanks to the fact that Spanish producers have understood how important it is to enter white brands (1/3 of the total in the US) and own brands.
In addition, Spanish companies such as Borges, De Olio and Acesur have established alliances with American brands to export their oils through them, so that they reach the consumer with other brands.
In the US market, it is very common to see bottles of extra virgin olive oil made with a mixture of different origins, which usually appear in very small print on the back label: thus, a brand that “sounds Italian” like Bertolli specifies that on the bottle Non-precise amounts of oils from nine different countries have entered, without knowing the percentages.
What’s more, Shaw supposes that there are Californian brands that manage to buy Spanish oil and not declare that it is, passing it off as California oil.
With a still small per capita consumption (2 liters per inhabitant per year, compared to 12 liters in Spain), Shaw believes that there is a lot of potential in the United States, especially in today’s world where natural and little processed products are highly valued.
THE ITALIANS “POWERED THE WAY”
Eusebio García de la Cruz has been selling olive oil under the family brand, produced in Madridejos, Toledo, in the United States for seven years, when he settled here with his family, understanding that only by knowing the customer in his own environment can one break through in a market which he describes as “difficult”.
From the beginning, he knew that he did not want to enter the low-end sector because it was the least likely to allow him to grow, and he opted for the high-end sector ($20 per pint): he signed an agreement with one of the largest supermarket chains “gourmet” and placed its oil in three formats.
De la Cruz, who has organized expeditions of American experts to his plant in Spain, believes that this country should learn from Italy because “it sells its brand and has done very well”, thanks among other things to its huge community in the US, to the just like (to a lesser extent) the Greeks.
And although Spain boasts of dethroning the Italians, De la Cruz wants to give God what belongs to God: without the path that the Italians paved, he reflects, olive oil would not be what it is today in the US.
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