Olive oil prices sit low as Spain's next crop wobbles

Olive oil prices at origin in Spain remain far below their peaks, with extra virgin quoted at 4.00 to 4.60 euros a kilo in recent Poolred readings, as the first field data on the 2026/27 crop turns negative.

The same readings put virgin olive oil at 3.70 to 3.80 euros and lampante at 3.20 to 3.30. Spain's export price stood at 7.66 dollars a kilo in May. The gap between the two numbers is the entire supply chain, and it has not narrowed as origin prices fell.

Preliminary field data compiled by Tridge points to a 37% decline in flowering fertility for the coming harvest. Flowering fertility is not yield, and October rain can still change the picture, but it is the first number growers have and it is pointing the wrong way.

Buyers are capping bids as if the cupboard is full. The carryover says otherwise.

Where olive oil prices are now

Low, and flat rather than falling. Buyers have been capping their bids while demand softens, which is the market behaving as if the cupboard is full. Cumulative Spanish production through March reached 1.28 million tonnes, about 7% below the initial forecast of 1.37 million.

The cupboard is not as full as it looks. The Spanish producer association OliveA warned in May that close to 880,000 tonnes had already been sold in seven months, roughly 70% of the 2025/26 crop, which leaves a thin carryover heading into a season that may come in short.

What a kitchen should do about it

Buy the year, not the week. Restaurants that fix volume now are contracting against a market priced for abundance and a crop that may not deliver it; those that wait are betting on the rain. Neither is a strategy, but only one of them is cheap today.

The counter-argument is that two consecutive good harvests have reset expectations, and a 37% drop in flowering from a high base is not the same as a shortage. Coffee is running the same problem in reverse, with a record crop forecast and prices already falling. Both stories end at the same place: the price a kitchen pays was set a season ago.