Press Release: World’s First Greek Olive Oil Info Site in English Celebrates 1st Birthday

American consumers worry about the high price of Italian olive oil. Greeks continue to struggle with economic difficulties eight years into a crisis. And the Greek olive oil that could help support both a Greek recovery and reasonable olive oil prices does not get the international attention it needs. For the past year, an American living in Crete has been trying to change that with the world’s first independent English-language website focused on Greek olive oil, Greek Liquid Gold: Authentic Extra Virgin Olive Oil (www.greekliquidgold.com).

In the past two years, Lisa Radinovsky has conversed with a Greek ship captain turned olive farmer, an Italian computer programmer who produces olive oil in Greece, an ancient Greek teacher who sells olive oil with edible gold flakes in the Middle East, and dozens of other Greeks in the olive oil industry. And she has shared their stories on her website.

Radinovsky’s olive oil education began when she started writing for the online American publication Olive Oil Times. She soon came to believe that Greek olive oil producers and exporters were not getting the credit they deserved for their efforts to produce high quality, healthy olive oil—a higher percentage of extra virgin than any other country.  

A former English professor accustomed to sharing what she learned, Radinovsky decided to create the outlet for Greek olive oil news and information that did not yet exist. She included sections on the health benefits of olive oil and the Mediterranean diet and added photos, recipes, and agrotourism and culinary tourism suggestions to appeal to a broad readership. She teamed up with another Princeton alum, Dimitris Doukas of Twin Net Information Systems Ltd. in Athens, to create this new website.

In the first year since the website’s launch, Radinovsky has published over 100 original, in-depth articles on it, and a number of them have been republished in Australia, Greece, the USA, Spain, and Italy. She has covered such topics as olive oil prices, predictions for olive oil production, olive mill visits, types of olive oil, the history of olive oil in Greece, and Greek olive oil companies’ innovations, support for Alzheimer’s research, and awards.

Radinovsky has gained the attention and support of the major Greek olive oil industry organizations, multi-award winning Greek olive oil companies, and numerous experts in the olive oil world, publishing interview-based articles as part of her original reporting. After just one year, the website has readers in 131 countries, while its companion Facebook page has more than 1,000 followers.

Radinovsky reports that Greek olive oil producers, marketers, exporters, and tasters have thanked her for “providing a new way for them to reach out to the world and share their voices, so they have more chances to share their products.” For example, Evi Psounou Prodomou of Yanni’s Olive Grove believes Greek Liquid Gold “is an accurate and independent website” that “gives an equal chance to anyone in the EVOO business.” James Panagiotopoulos of PJ KABOS considers Greek Liquid Gold “a great, reliable source to find any information one can imagine about Greek olive oil.”  

Evgenia Andriopoulou of Makaria Terra explains that “Greek Liquid Gold provides an integrated platform for the promotion of the qualities of the best Greek olive oils. It certainly fills a gap. Despite the fact that there is a clear attempt to promote Greek olive oils, the articles and posts remain completely fair. All is based on facts, and this is good not only for the site and its development, but for the overall promotion and the preservation/improvement of the integrity of quality Greek olive oil.” 

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Note: this press release may be freely published as long as a live link to the site discussed, www.greekliquidgold.com, is included. For more information, please contact info@greekliquidgold.com.

First Estimates for 2017/18 Olive Oil Production Compared

The first estimates of the amount of olive oil to be produced by the major olive oil producing nations in the next crop year (October 1, 2017 to September 30, 2018) were published recently. While there is naturally some disagreement, and it is early to make predictions, a significant increase over this year’s olive oil production levels seems likely.

Writing on the English page of his Greek online paper Olive News , Vassilis Zampounis described his expectations for production in the upcoming olive crop year “compared to the current year’s production in the 8 leading olive oil producers that make up to 90% of the world olive oil production.” Including a chart comparing last year’s production with this year’s estimates (in metric tons), Zampounis explained, “the average expected increase for 2017/18 is 405,000 tons or 18.6%. In the case of the highest expected production,” which he estimates at 2,730,000 tons, “the increase will reach 555,000 tons (+25.5%). In the lowest production scenario,” or 2,430,000 tons, “the total increase will be 255,000 tons (11.7%).” Zampounis is both the editor of Olivenenews.gr and the director of the Society of Oliveand Olive Oil Products of Certified Quality (EL3P). 

The Spanish magazineMercacei reported on the “the forecast by Álvaro Olavarría, Managing Director of Oleoestepa,” a large cooperative, with an emphasis on the world’s largest olive oil producer, Spain, and the prediction that it will produce “1,250,000 tons in the 2017/18 season compared to 1,281,950 tons in the previous one.” Providing a chart with information about the top 8 olive oil producing nations dating back to the 2013/14 harvest year, Mercacei added, “olive oil production in the main producing countries will reach a total of 2,745,000 tons, increasing by 11% over the 2016/17 season, according to these forecasts.”

Spanish language publications are now sharing the international estimates of Juan Vilar, strategic consultant and professor at the University of Jaén, and Jorge Pereira, Professor at the University of the Republic of Uruguay, who expect the next olive oil campaign to produce a total of 2.827 million tons, for a 5% increase over the current crop year according to their calculations. Olivenews.gr published a Greek version of the report, along with Vilar and Pereira’s table featuring estimates in Spanish with data from the 57 olive oil producing countries that make up 93 percent of the world’s production. This table forecasts 1.2 million tons of olive oil from Spain, 290,000 from Tunisia, 280,000 from Italy, 265,000 from Greece, 200,000 from Turkey, together anticipated to be the producers of almost 80% of the world’s olive oil next year, assuming the weather cooperates.

Teatro Naturaleweighed in, only in Italian so far, with a comparison of the estimates of Mercacei, Olive News, and its own June 2 and updated estimates, suggesting the other sources may overestimate Italy’s likely production level. Reproducing the charts from Mercacei and Olive News, Teatro Naturale added a third which compares these three sources’ estimates with its own earlier forecast, commenting that there is “a degree of uniformity in the data, with the exception of Tunisia and Turkey.” (That is true of Vilar and Pereira’s predictions, as well, which call for considerably more olive oil from Turkey than the other sources.) Teatro Naturale proceeded to update its own expectations (leaving its chart a bit outdated), now estimating 1,150,000 metric tons of olive oil production in Spain, 250,000 in Italy, 250,000 in Greece, 200,000 in Tunisia, 90,000 in Morocco, 100,000 in Portugal, and 220,000 in Turkey, with Syria a big question mark given the war. Their conclusion is an estimate of 2.3 million metric tons from the Mediterranean and 2.4 million tons total, worldwide.  

Interestingly, Vassilis Zampounis’s low and high estimates of 2.43 to 2.73 million metric tons from the main producing nations is quite close to Teatro Naturale’s low expectation of 2.3 million tons and Mercacei’s higher prediction of 2.745 million tons. (Note that this does leave out the minor producers, so that the total would be expected to be higher worldwide—as Vilar and Pereira’s forecast of 2.827 million tons globally also suggests.) There is more disagreement over the percent increase compared to the current crop year (2016/17), which may relate to differing calculations of this year’s production totals as well as next year’s. Teatro Naturale does not offer a percentage. Vilar and Pereira estimate just a 5% increase, while Mercacei expects 11% more olive oil in the coming crop year, and Zampounis anticipates at least that much, and up to 25.5% more than last year.

In spite of the variations in the estimates and the early date, months before the earliest harvests begin in Greece in October, Zampounis told Greek Liquid Gold that as long as they are timely, relevant, and precise, “predictions are always useful, because they inform those involved in the market: producers, olive mill owners, merchants, bottlers. Transparency helps healthy competition. If, for example, there is surplus offer, then the logical thing to expect will be a decline of prices. In case of scarcity, prices will rise.” He especially respects “the Spanish ministry of agriculture and the interprofessional organizations of that country” as “models of information and transparency.”

Zampounis explains that predictions “can have an important influence on the prices,” and hence on “the decision whether to sell stock or keep more products in stock.” Although Zampounis has some reservations about making price predictions at this point, he informed Greek Liquid Gold that he suspects that “until the fresh olive oils hit the market (end of November, December) the prices will be stable, with some possible outbursts of price hikes due to demand for certain special qualities, etc. Starting in January 2018, prices will probably be moving normally (maybe with a small decline), influenced by other factors such as sales trends.”

Zampounis also cautioned that “the data must be monitored closely,” since “there is always the chance of unexpected weather conditions, especially in the era of climate change.” Given the need for careful monitoring, “the role of experienced professionals and agronomists who are on the spot and closely monitoring the olive groves is key.” Stay tuned for updates as they appear on Greek Liquid Gold: Authentic Extra Virgin Olive Oil, where this article was originally published.