Spain Padlocked Olive Oil in 2023. Now It May Lock Up the Surplus

The Pantry Pulse, 28 September 2026.

In the autumn of 2023, a supermarket chain in Andalusia began chaining its five-liter jugs of olive oil together and padlocking them to the shelf. Extra virgin had become worth stealing. The official price in Spain had reached about eight euros a liter, some one-liter bottles were selling for 14.50, and stores in Madrid were fitting them with the security tags usually kept for spirits and cosmetics. Three years later the country is weighing a different kind of lock, for the opposite reason. On Monday, Agriculture Minister Luis Planas said his ministry would publish the national aforo, its official estimate of the coming olive harvest, before the weekend, and that he would take the sector's low prices to Brussels. If that estimate is large enough, a rule written for exactly this moment allows Spain to order its mills to keep part of the new oil off the market for a year.

How far the price has fallen

Olive oil is traded in bulk, by the kilo, at origin, before anyone bottles it. On 22 September the Infaoliva reference quoted extra virgin at 3.325 euros a kilo, virgin at 3.283 and lampante at 3.192; the Junta de Andalucía's figures were close, at 3.45 for extra virgin and 3.20 for lampante. The market-intelligence service OliveTerm puts the top of this year's market in late March, when its price index printed 443 euros per 100 kilos, and had it in the mid-350s through July, about a fifth of the price gone in three months. The two series are built differently, so read them for direction rather than as one line.

Two things pulled the floor away. The trade framework between the EU and the United States took effect on 1 July with a flat 15 percent tariff ceiling on European goods, closing the duty-free window American buyers had spent the spring positioning for. And the crop turned generous: spring left good conditions for flowering and fruit set, and Spain's agriculture ministry fast-tracked this year's marketing rule because forecasts point to high production next season. In Spanish supermarkets, private-label extra virgin is back under five euros a liter, with one-liter bottles at about 4.44 to 4.70 and five-liter jugs near 3.80 a liter, after drought years when shoppers paid seven to nine.

The most telling number is the smallest one. Lampante is the grade of virgin olive oil that must be refined before anyone can eat it. On 22 September the best grade of olive oil in Spain's bulk market cost 13 cents a kilo more than it.

The rule that can hold oil back

Article 167a of the regulation that organizes the EU's farm markets lets producing countries set marketing rules for olive oil to steady supply, and a 2021 Spanish decree sets out how Spain applies it. The mechanism is simple to state. If the oil available for the season, opening stocks plus the estimated harvest, reaches at least 120 percent of the average for the previous six seasons, a ministry resolution fixes a share of production that mills must withdraw and store until the following season, capped at 20 percent. Each mill chooses which grade to set aside, and the withheld oil can be sent to non-food uses.

Spain approved an order like this for the first time last season and never used it, because stocks and forecasts stayed below the threshold. The order for 2026/27 went through public consultation until 13 August and must be adopted before 31 October to apply to this harvest. Cooperativas Agro-alimentarias de Andalucía, the cooperatives' federation that pressed for it, describes it as a tool that depends on the data rather than an automatic withdrawal. This week's aforo is the data.

Who pays, either way

The chain from tree to shelf is long: family farm, cooperative, mill, bottler, retailer. When the price at origin falls, the adjustment lands hardest on the first link. Farm organizations in Valencia report that extra virgin has dropped more than 15 percent since the season began, and growers on traditional, dryland and mountain groves, where a kilo of oil costs far more to produce, warn that prices are closing in on their costs. For them, a withdrawal is meant to work as a floor.

Spain's competition authority, the CNMC, reviewed last season's version and warned that forced withdrawal can raise prices and reduce the variety and quality of oil reaching shoppers, hurting lower-income households most, along with distributors and exporters. It asked the ministry to weigh alternatives such as private storage before ordering oil off the market, and to allow early repeal if conditions change. Both sides have a point, which is why the size of the number matters so much.

There is also a risk the market may be underpricing. Two heatwaves reached Andalusia after the last regional crop survey closed: a mid-June episode that OliveTerm says cost 3 to 7 percent of the young fruit in affected zones, and a July spell that pushed Jaén, Córdoba and Sevilla to 42 to 44 degrees Celsius. An aforo smaller than the market expects would likely send prices up, not down.

What the scenarios mean for a bottle

A standard 500-milliliter bottle holds about 0.46 kilos of oil. The scenario bands below are OliveTerm's, published in July, linking the size of the aforo to a likely range for Jaén bulk prices through the end of the year; the bottle column is our calculation.

Two things follow. The gap between the cheapest and dearest Spanish scenario is about 74 euro cents of oil per bottle, a real swing for a family buying five-liter jugs and a small one inside the price of a finished bottle in Denver. And the withdrawal rule, at its 20 percent cap on a Spanish harvest of 1.55 million tonnes, the International Olive Council's first estimate for this season as OliveTerm reported it, would hold back about 310,000 tonnes. Assumptions: olive oil weighs about 0.916 kilos a liter; prices are bulk, before bottling, freight, the 15 percent US tariff and importer and retail margins; whether the rule fires at all depends on opening stocks as well as the harvest.

On the shelf

The Pantry’s olive oils sit on both sides of this story. Graza's Drizzle and Sizzle are pressed from single-origin Picual olives grown in Jaén, the province whose bulk price this piece has been tracking: Drizzle from olives picked in the first two weeks of October, Sizzle from the peak of the harvest between late November and early January. This week's aforo is an estimate of exactly that fruit. Capezzana's extra virgin comes from an organically farmed estate in the Carmignano hills west of Florence, from an Italian market where origin prices in July ran roughly 60 percent above Spain's. All three are on the olive oil shelf at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver, and ship nationwide from theambrosianpantry.com.

The larger pattern is the one our California vineyard piece traced last week: farms answer demand years late, so scarcity plants the next surplus. Drought put padlocks on supermarket shelves. A good spring may put some of this year's oil in a locked tank. The number arrives before the weekend, and it will go a long way toward deciding whether cheap oil stays cheap.

The Ambrosian Pantry sells olive oil, including the bottles named above. Nothing in this piece is investment advice.

Sources and Further Reading

• Moncloa.com, 28 September 2026: Planas on this week's aforo and taking low prices to Brussels
• Moncloa.com, 27 July 2026: the 2026/27 olive oil marketing rule in public consultation
• CNMC, 1 October 2025: the competition authority's report on mandatory olive oil withdrawal
• Boletín Oficial del Estado: Orden APA/1192/2025, the 2025/26 olive oil marketing rule
• Cooperativas Agro-alimentarias de Andalucía, 31 July 2026: the cooperatives on the 2026/27 rule
• Infobae, 22 September 2026: Infaoliva, Córdoba and Junta de Andalucía bulk prices
• Don Porqué, 7 September 2026: Spanish retail olive oil prices and grower costs
• OliveTerm, July 2026 Market Report: price index, tariff reset, heat and aforo scenarios
• Reuters via Cyprus Mail, 20 November 2023: Spanish supermarkets lock up olive oil
• International Olive Council, July 2025: trade standard COI/T.15/NC No 3/Rev. 21, olive oil grades