If you've been grocery shopping for Olive Oil lately, you'll have noticed how expensive a litre of oil has become. In fact, the price of the average litre of Olive Oil has more than doubled in the last few years. It makes it very difficult for those who love cooking with it, restaurants, businesses who sell it, and those of us who make soap with it.
Why the price increase? It has been a perfect storm of problems in the industry.
The mediterranean area, where Olive trees grow best, has had three consecutive years of bad weather, supply chain issues, inflationary problems with gas, electricity, transportation, and fertilizer, as well a geopolitical problems.
Here are the largest producers of Olive Oil (according to World Atlas) in and around the Mediterranean region.
Production in Spain is currently down by 62%, adding to a world wide shortage. When there's a shortage, prices go up along with all the other factors. It is now considered "liquid gold". If you live in Southern California and lucky enough to have a few Olive trees in your garden, guard those olives. In one of Spain's mills, theft of 50,000 litres of EVOO was estimated at 420,000 Euros !
Olive trees are extremely vulnerable to climate change - extreme heat waves, less rainfall, dryer soils have all had an affect on the trees and once they're stressed, like most plants/trees, pests and diseases set in. Several regions have seen major declines of orchards, keeping in mind that these trees can typically live hundreds of years!
And so, let's hope that Olive Oil production becomes more stable and that prices do not remain high. It's an amazing oil to use in our soap production. However, in order to keep prices the same, we will be taking a little break from using the EVOO and perhaps use Pomace Olive Oil on occasion. There are plenty of other wonderful oils we can use in the meantime. We do have stock of soaps that contain Olive Oil at the moment. You can browse through all the scents and designs here:
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