Italian olive oil output jumps 31% to 325,000 tonnes
Ismea data unveiled at Turin's Terra Madre show a rebound to 325,000 tonnes for 2025-26, with prices still above Spain, Greece and Tunisia as the new harvest begins.
Italian olive oil production jumped 31% to 325,000 tonnes in the 2025-26 season. Ismea, the state agrifood market institute, gave the figures on September 24 at Turin's Terra Madre Salone del Gusto, as the country opens a new campaign with fuller stocks and prices still above its main European rivals.
The data came from a panel titled "Italian oil, toward the new campaign: markets, prices and prospects", led by Ismea president Livio Proietti and Tiziana Sarnari, head of the agency's geographical indications office. The session opened four days of programming that Ismea is running with Slow Food Italia through September 27.
Italian olive oil output rebounds sharply
Volume is back, margins are not: this season's oil is still worth less than last year's.
Output had slipped to around 248,000 tonnes in the weak 2024-25 season before this year's rebound, Ismea's figures show. Italy's olive sector now spans more than one million hectares, roughly 289,000 of them certified organic, split across some 620,000 farms and over 4,200 active mills.
The country holds 51 EU geographical indications for Italian olive oil, 42 of them PDO and nine PGI, a tally Ismea highlighted in a separate session the next day on how designations add value to Italian farm produce.
Extra virgin oil on the Bari benchmark market was quoted at €4.55 a kilo in September, below last year's peaks. Ismea said Italian olive oil quotations still sit above Spain, Greece and Tunisia, and above levels recorded before the 2022 price spike, despite this year's declines.
Trade in Italian olive oil moved with the bigger harvest. Imports fell in the first half of 2026 as domestic supply grew, while exports to the United States and Germany contracted; shipments to the United Kingdom, Poland, the Netherlands and Belgium rose over the same period.
Public money keeps mills afloat
The rebound follows a run of state support for a fragmented supply chain. The agriculture ministry has already put €40 million into Italian olive oil mill liquidity this year, and the pending ColtivaItalia bill earmarks €300 million for the sector between 2027 and 2029. Ismea puts total PNRR and PNC support for the chain at €1.9 billion since 2023, reaching more than 2,000 businesses.
Spain, the world's largest producer, is heading into its own early harvest around Jaén, which will help decide how long Italy's price edge holds. Ismea's next reading comes with the 2026-27 campaign, due to open across southern Italy through October.
Volume is back, margins are not: this season's oil is still worth less than last year's.
