Shock as olive oil is dethroned as the most used cooking oil in Spain

Spain usually supplies around 40% of the world’s olive oil

Sunflower oil has dethroned olive oil as king of the kitchen in Spain.

The news has left many in the world’s largest olive oil producer shocked, as rising prices force consumers to switch to cheaper options.

Spaniards bought 107 million litres (28.3 million gallons) of all types of olive oil in the first half of 2024 compared to 179 million litres of sunflower oil, according to Spain‘s biggest olive oil bottling association, Anierac.

Bottles of virgin olive oil, sealed with an anti-theft system, are photographed on a shelf in a shop in Barcelona, Spain (Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Until this year, olive oil has been the most popular cooking oil in Spanish households, accounting for 62% of sales by volume in 2023 while sunflower oil represented almost 34%, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

“It is clear that olive oil consumption is falling in Spain,” said Primitivo Fernandez, spokesman for Anierac. “There are households that used to buy only olive oil and for the first time are now buying sunflower oil and olive oil,” he said.

Olive oil sales by volume fell 18% from the first half of 2023, Anierac said. Sunflower oil sales increased by 25% in volume last year, according to official data.

A tank is filled with olive oil at the ‘La Betica Aceitera’ oil mill in the southern town of Quesada, a rural community in the heartland of Spain's olive country (Bernat Armangue)

A bottle of sunflower oil cost an average of 1.86 euros ($2.07) a litre last year, while pricier olive oil types cost upwards of 6 euros a litre, 50% more than in 2022, official data showed.

Spain usually supplies around 40% of the world’s olive oil, but heatwaves in the spring and a prolonged drought reduced olive harvests over the past two years, doubling olive oil prices to record levels.

That has pushed the staple of the Mediterranean diet beyond the reach of poor households in Spain, which are switching to cheaper sunflower oil, according to a Ministry of Agriculture report on food consumption trends in 2023.

At the end of last year, olive oil was mainly consumed in middle and upper-middle class households, the report said.

One-litre bottles of extra-virgin olive oil were selling for as much as 14.5 euros ($15.77) in some supermarkets last year, putting them in the category of products retailers fit with security tags.

In June, the Spanish government cut the value added tax on olive oil to make it more affordable even as prices have eased a little this year.

Spain‘s largest supermarket chain Mercadona has cut the price of olive oil by 25% this year and this week is offering 1 litre bottles below 7 euros to woo back customers, a company source said.