Moura, Portugal, May 11, 2026 (Lusa) - Portugal's olive oil production reached 160,000 tonnes in the current season and quintupled in the last 26 years, but experts meeting in the Alentejo town of Moura on Monday said the sector can still grow in volume and value.
"Since the beginning of the century until today [2026], we have quintupled average production," the chair of the Alentejo Olive Oil Study and Promotion Centre (CEPAAL), Manuel Norte Santo, said.
Speaking to Lusa during the National Olive Oil Congress in the Beja district, he said Portugal’s olive oil production reached 160,000 tonnes in the 2025-2026 season.
He said this quantity represents €700 million for the country, considering the average value of bulk olive oil sales.
Norte Santo said that although bulk sales still account for more than 50% of production, mostly for export, CEPAAL wanted to create a "Portuguese olive oil umbrella brand" to increase value. An umbrella brand is a single brand used to market a group of related products.
He said this brand would “increase value and visibility, allowing the country to retain that €700 million and sell more with a Portuguese stamp.”
"What we want is for this more than 50% not to be sold in bulk, but to be packaged, sold and on shelves with the Portuguese olive oil brand, keeping that added value here instead of in Spain or Italy," he explained.
The olive sector has seen "a major transformation in production, in both olive groves and state-of-the-art mills," he said.
However, he noted the country "often ignores this commercial advantage and the economic value it can retain by creating brands."
Portugal’s olive grove area has also "expanded sharply," he said.
Portugal now has “350,000 hectares of olive groves, mostly in the Alentejo region, specifically Baixo Alentejo,” thanks to the irrigation perimeter created by the Alqueva reservoir (Europe's largest artificial lake).
"There is still room for growth and clear potential for that. We also need to replicate in other parts of the country what we are doing in the Baixo Alentejo," he said.
Gonçalo Moreira, project manager at Olivum (Association of Olive Growers and Mills of Portugal), said on the sidelines of the same congress, that despite a 10% drop in production compared to 2025,"new groves and productive areas" are constantly entering production.
"We were the first country to replace modern olive groves with even more modern ones. Recently, we have been converting vase-shaped groves, which had up to 800 trees per hectare, into hedgerow groves, which have more trees and higher production capacity," he said.
Moreira believes these new hedgerow areas will soon cause the production curve to "grow again, as it did in the first 20 years" of the century and this will not even require irrigated land.
"We can install new hedgerow groves even without irrigation. Producers are showing strong interest in this model because, even without water, we can establish rain-fed groves if the land conditions allow it," he said.
Olivum shares positive outlooks for the coming years: "Portugal’s record olive oil output reached 206,000 tonnes, and we believe that, within three to five years, we can reach around 300,000 tonnes," Moreira said, adding that this would place Portugal "second in Europe’s production ranking and third or fourth worldwide."
RRL/LYT // AYLS
Lusa
