The Competitiveness Of Olive Oil

All these differences can be seen as a result of several factors, including transport and transaction fares, cost competitiveness of exporting countries, variations in services and quality of the product (differences in the classification of virgin and refined olive oil), packaging of the product, and the effectiveness of marketing strategies, including market discrimination (the exporter’s skill to sell a certain olive oil on different markets at different prices).The average value per unit of virgin olive oil exports of the E.U.-25 at the importer's border are 10-20% higher than the values of the other main exporters; regarding refined olive oil, the average import unit value of the exports from Morocco is a bit higher than the ones from the E.U.-25 both to the USA and to the Canadian market. The exports of virgin olive oil from Syria and Tunisia have the lowest average import unit values.Tunisia,Turkey,Syria and Morocco show small differences in the average unit values of exports of two types of oil, than that from the E.U.-25. Syria sells refined olive oil to the USA; the E.U.-25 and Australia at a price higher than that of the virgin olive oil, even though it has to be pointed out that more than 90% of Syrian exports are composed of virgin olive oil sold by the E.U.-25.

The share of virgin olive oil in the entire bulk of exports from the E.U. varies depending on the destination country; virgin olive oils represent 64%, 60% and 66% of the exports from the E.U. to the USA,Japan and Canada respectively, but they amount to 88% of the E.U. exports to South-Korea and only 37% to Australia.