 |
| Olive trees in Vlora |
Albania is recording high levels of olive oil production, but exports remain very low. Oil producers have not secured certification to export even though the country has dozens of olive processing factories.
Meanwhile, the local market is marking the lowest levels of oil prices, which does not justify the costs of services and olive harvesting to farmers.
In the oil processing factories in Vlora, one of the most popular areas for olive cultivation in Albania, farmers continue to send the last quantities of this season.
The indicators speak for this year of overproduction of olive oil in Albania in relation to the demands of the domestic market and the highest, compared to all previous years, VOA reports.
The director of the Center for the Transfer of Agricultural Technologies in Vlora, Meno Besimaj, says that the increase in production this year has been influenced by the climatic conditions, the increase in the areas with olives, and the increase in the technologies of olive services.
"In the country, from about 11 million roots with olives, about 9 million are in production and the surfaces are increasing year after year. In a survey that we have done on a national scale and from the statistical data, we claim that this season there may be about 150 thousand tons of grain olives from which about 20 thousand tons of olive oil were produced".
About 90% of olive oil is sold in Albania not in supermarkets, but by farmers and small producers themselves, and the overproduction of oil has brought a significant decrease in the price in the market.
Enerik Xhaferaj, an olive processor in Vlora, says that the price of olive oil has reached about 4 dollars per liter, which does not justify the efforts of farmers and their costs.
The price of olive oil has suffered a noticeable drop, it is almost at its minimum and below cost. Farmers have been hurt a lot by this price as agricultural imputations have increased, labor costs have increased and everything is on the rise. When we see that even 400 leks a liter of olive oil has been sold, this is in cost. Collecting 100 kilos of olives costs 3,000 leks. This amount produces 18 to 20 liters of oil, and if you include the annual services and the cost of harvesting, and if a farmer uses workers for harvesting and does not do it himself with his family, he ends up under the market by selling the oil at that price.
While in Albania the production of oil is seen to be high, the levels of exports are very low. Exports of olive oil in 2021 were only 119 tons, with a value of about 550 thousand USD, while in 2022 exports were almost closed in approximate numbers.
The director of the Agricultural Center in Vlora, which previously served as a National Institute for Olives, says that the lack of association of farmers who produce olives makes it difficult to export capacities.
The only way to export oil in large quantities is only cooperation and certification on a group basis, on a cultivar basis. We have very good, autochthonous cultivars, such as "kalinjoti" which is a very good quality oil and is in demand everywhere. If we certify it both as a cultivar, as a cultivation area, and as a production quality, then the markets will be open.
While Enerik Xhaferaj says that one of the challenges for producers to export is certification.
First, the product must be certified. The product is not yet certified because the farmers do not handle the production in the right way, they bring it in bags, keep the olives at home for days, do not collect them cleanly, etc. and this loses the quality of the oil.
Another challenge for Albanian enterprises to ensure the export of olive oil is the strengthening of laboratory capacities to certify both the varieties of olive plants and the quality of the oil.
The agricultural center in Vlora provides biomolecular analyzes of autochthonous varieties of the olive plant and some basic analyzes for oil, but there is still much room for increasing capacity with equipment and training to meet the wide range of laboratory analyses needed, says Melaize Yzeiraj, who works in this laboratory.
"Regarding the biomolecular laboratory, we are nearing the end of the molecular identification and we have managed to obtain results for the autochthonous cultivars in the collection that we have studied, and this mainly serves the certification of the cultivars."
Certification of Albanian laboratories at international levels and strengthening their capacities to respond to complex analyzes remains a challenge to ensure the export of olive oil.