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Many Swiss households rely on olive oil for salads, meat, fish or pasta. Now you have to accept significant price increases for the popular cooking oil. Poor harvests are to blame, reducing the supply of olive oil and affecting prices in supermarkets. Retailers are forced to buy olive oil at record prices.
At Coop, a 1-liter bottle of Prix Garantie extra virgin olive oil is now sold for 8 francs. In August, customers were still paying 6.90 francs. That’s a 16 percent surcharge, Blick research shows. Migros also makes significant increases in the prices of individual products. The price of 2 liters of Monini Classico extra virgin olive oil Delicato increased from 19.50 francs to 20.90 francs compared to August. It is currently 10.80 francs for Alexis extra virgin olive oil from Greece. A surcharge of 70 cents.
This is what retailers say
Migros says that, unfortunately, it is inevitable that sometimes prices on products need to be adjusted due to poor harvests. “The situation with olive oil, including in terms of supply, is still tense, as harvests are small or of poor quality. “This also has an impact on prices,” the orange giant continued.
Extreme drought severely affected the three most important producing countries, Spain, Italy and Greece. Spain is the most important exporter and was able to harvest only half of this amount of olive oil in the 2022/2023 season.
This situation is also clearly seen in Aldi: “Price adjustments have been made for our olive oil this year due to the ongoing drought in producing countries and the resulting increased raw material prices.” The discounter does not want to give any information about specific price changes.
In addition to the drought, Coop cites other cost factors: “Price adjustments had to be made for olive oil due to the increase in packaging, transportation and, above all, raw material costs.” At the same time, the high demand is also reflected in the purchase price of olive oil. However, the retailer emphasizes that you will have to bear some of the additional costs yourself. Even the prices of individual products such as organic olive oil were reduced.
Major price increases since the beginning of 2022
Compared to last year, price increases are even higher. Producers had already suffered from a long drought last season. Lidl has increased the price of its “frying olive oil” product from 4.69 francs to 6.79 francs per liter since December. A 1-litre bottle of Don Felipe extra virgin olive oil at Coop costs 13.70 francs today, compared to 10.95 francs in December. The Prix Guarantee product from Spain, which we mentioned at the beginning, was put on sale for 6 francs in December and 4.70 francs in January 2022. 70 percent price increase in 21 months.
The next harvest will be between December and February. However, last summer, heat, forest fires and pests negatively affected olive trees. Higher yields are still expected in Spain, but harvest volumes may fall sharply again in Italy. If aggregate supply increases, as retailers assure us, prices are likely to fall slightly again.
Source :Blick
I’m Tim David and I work as an author for 24 Instant News, covering the Market section. With a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism, my mission is to provide accurate, timely and insightful news coverage that helps our readers stay informed about the latest trends in the market. My writing style is focused on making complex economic topics easy to understand for everyone.
