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In Europe, there are only 10 states reporting oranges that grow because of their favorable climate. In 2018, Albania turns out to be France, which produced about 10,000 tons of oranges.
According to Eurostat, the European Union Member States harvested 6.5 million tonnes of oranges in 2018. This was the highest level of production since 2010 and was supported by the record harvest in Spain (3.6 million tonnes of oranges, or 56% of the EU total).
The climatic requirements for oranges make production limited to a handful of Member States. Besides Spain, the other main producing countries were Italy (1.6 million tonnes, or 24% of the EU total) and Greece (0.9 million tonnes, or 14% of the EU total).
Nearly 274,000 hectares (ha) of oranges were cultivated in 2018, with just over half of this total area being in Spain (140,000 ha). Italy had the next highest area allocated to orange production (83 000 ha, 30% of the EU total), followed by Greece (32 000 ha, 12% of the EU total).
After Italy are Greece (913 thousand tons of production), Portugal (340 thousand tons) and Cyprus (20 thousand tons). 10,000 tons were harvested in France, 8,100 tons in Cyprus and 3,700 tons in Croatia,
Of the non-EU member states, the only ones producing orange are Albania and Turkey with 1.9 million tonnes, which is actually ranked second in Europe, after Spain.
According to Eurostat, about three-quarters of oranges imported into the EU came from South Africa and Egypt.
The EU imported 1.1 million tonnes of oranges, worth 0.7 billion euros, from non-EU countries in 2018. About three-quarters of these imports came either from South Africa (465,000 tonnes, or 43% of the extra-EU total orange imports in 2018) or Egypt (328 000 tonnes, 30%).
The bulk of imports of oranges from the EU came from Morocco (89 000 tonnes, 8%), Argentina (44 000 tonnes, 4%), Zimbabwe (39 000 tonnes, nearly 4%), Turkey (29 000 tonnes, 3%). %) and Uruguay (27 000 tonnes, 2%).