The price of extra virgin olive oil is already a national debate and its price, with liter bottles at more than 10 euros, still does not reach the ceiling. The drought and poor harvests have caused the production of liquid gold in Spain, the country that exports the most in the world, to have fallen considerably by almost half.
Since the increase in the price of extra virgin olive oil is on the street, several videos of Spaniards residing in other countries have gone viral telling how much this product costs there. It has also become popular to stop buying this product in supermarkets and look for a better offer by going directly to cooperatives, where a five-liter bottle can cost around 40 euros.
First it was Ireland, where a tiktoker Spanish showed that the liter was 4.70 euros. Then came Puerto Rico, where another content creator showed that in a well-known supermarket there, in the area of Spanish products, it was worth 7.20 euros, a high price but still lower than that of Spain.
After Ireland and Puerto Rico came Paris. A Twitter user published a photo in which you could see that a liter of oil was 5.32 euros, almost half that of Spain. The curious thing is that, in that same tweet, a citizen responded with the price of a liter bottle in Rome.
At Conad, Italy’s leading supermarket, as can be seen in the image published on Twitter, a liter of extra virgin olive oil is 4.99 euros. What’s more, the label is reduced by 24% and previously cost 6.59. To that tweet, a user responded that it is likely that this oil is local and hence its price.
As can be read in xatakaDespite this price, in Italy oil prices have also risen by an average of 50% and for the same reasons as in Spain. A year ago a liter was four euros and now it is over eight and, like here, in some supermarkets it is around 10 euros.
“For example, in Conad, the leading supermarket in Italy, the private label liter is the cheapest, costing 7 euros. The Farchioni brand, on the other hand, shoots up to €9.06 per liter,” says the aforementioned media about the supermarket on the What is this news about?
Why these prices?
An expert has explained in four a day why in countries like Ireland or the United Kingdom they are paying five euros per liter and in Spain almost double in some cases.
“These oils may have been marketed months ago at prices that were lower then,” explained the Interprofessional Manager of Spanish Olive Oil, Teresa Pérez.
“Today in Spain we have a much higher product rotation and therefore the prices at origin are passed on to the consumer earlier,” he pointed out.
“To better understand the concept of rotation: in Spain a consumer consumes around 700 milliliters in three weeks. This means that in three weeks they will have to return to the point of sale to buy another bottle. While an Irishman probably takes 10 months to go back to the point of sale for a bottle”, he concluded.
