The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food announced this Friday in the Official State Gazette (BOE) the order that regulates the olive oil marketing standard for the 2026/27 campaign, whose purpose is to organize supply in order to improve and provide stability to the functioning of the olive oil sector and prevent possible disruptions in the market.
Article 167 bis of Community Regulation 1308/2013 states that, with the aim of improving and stabilizing the behavior of the common market in olive oils and the olives from which they come, producing member states may establish marketing standards aimed at controlling supply.
To specify the application of this regulation in Spain, the Executive approved Royal Decree 84/2021, which provides, when market circumstances so require, the possibility of implementing marketing standards to reinforce stability and the proper functioning of the market in a specific campaign, by withdrawing product until the following campaign and/or sending it to non-food uses.
In this way, it is a measure of application "exceptional in nature and temporary".
Agriculture has stressed that the "indispensable" condition to be able to put this withdrawal mechanism into operation is that the volume of initial stocks for the campaign, added to production forecasts, reaches 120% of the average of this same aggregate in the six previous campaigns.
The weather conditions recorded last spring in the main olive-growing areas, characterized by moderate temperatures and abundant rainfall, favored satisfactory flowering and fruit set. This behavior is reflected in the estimates prepared by the autonomous communities, which point to an estimated production for the 2026/2027 campaign of 1,602,596 tons, 23% higher than the previous one. This figure would place the campaign as the fourth largest in the historical series.
In parallel, the initial stocks for the 2026/2027 campaign have stood, according to the Olive Oil Market Information System, which integrates the operators' data and which were made public by the ministry on October 28, at 357,040 tons, which represents 23.3% more than the stocks with which the previous campaign began.
Thus, the marketing order issued today establishes the criterion for setting the percentage of oil withdrawal, applicable to any category and at the choice of the operator itself, over the total accumulated monthly production of olive oil. The affected facilities will be the producing mills distributed throughout the national territory.
Once the order is in force, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food will determine, before November 15 and through a resolution of the Directorate General of Agricultural Productions and Markets, the percentage of olive oil that must be withdrawn until the conclusion of the current 2026/2027 campaign.
This resolution may later be reviewed depending on how storage evolves and on the impact it has on the stabilization of the olive oil market.