Tunisia’s Olive Oil Sector Faces Record Harvest Amid Price Collapse and Fraud Allegations

Summary

Tunisia is expected to achieve record olive oil pro­duc­tion in the 2025/2026 cam­paign, with esti­mates rang­ing from 400,000 to 500,000 tons, lead­ing to increased export poten­tial. However, the sec­tor faces chal­lenges such as low export prices, finan­cial scan­dals, and con­cerns about the impact on the inter­na­tional olive oil mar­ket.

Olive oil pro­duc­tion in Tunisia appears to be head­ing for a new record in the 2025/2026 cam­paign.

According to some esti­mates, it is expected to yield between 400,000 and 500,000 tons, fur­ther increas­ing expec­ta­tions for export poten­tial. In the pre­vi­ous cam­paign, pro­duc­tion fell short of 340,000 tons, accord­ing to fig­ures from the International Olive Council (IOC).

Tunisian President Kaïs Saied offi­cially announced the start of the new olive cam­paign dur­ing a meet­ing with the Minister of Agriculture, Water Resources, and Fisheries, Ezzeddine Ben Cheikh.

Saied wel­comed expec­ta­tions to export more olive oil to coun­tries in Asia and Latin America. Still, those trade routes today rep­re­sent only a frac­tion of Tunisia’s olive oil exports, which mostly go to the European Union and the United States. Furthermore, the U.S. imposed a 25 per­cent tar­iff on olive oil imports from Tunisia.

Saied also high­lighted the many prob­lems still affect­ing the Tunisian olive oil sec­tor, call­ing for progress in all phases of pro­duc­tion — from farm­ing to har­vest­ing, pro­cess­ing, and trade. He specif­i­cally asked for more sup­port to small farm­ers while crit­i­ciz­ing the declin­ing role of some gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies, such as the Olive Oil Board, say­ing their role ​“must be rein­stated.”

The Tunisian gov­ern­ment is also push­ing for more bot­tled olive oil exports, as such prod­ucts carry a higher mar­ket value.

However, the low export prices cur­rently rep­re­sent the main obsta­cle to the sector’s devel­op­ment and are a cause of grow­ing unrest among farm­ers.

The National Observatory of Agriculture (ONAGRI) reported a 40.1 per­cent increase in olive oil exports between November 2024 and April 2025. Still, those record fig­ures pro­duced a 28.9 per­cent drop in earn­ings, from approx­i­mately €1 bil­lion to €715.5 mil­lion.

According to var­i­ous sources, a sub­stan­tial por­tion of the low-priced bulk sales of Tunisian olive oil dur­ing the 2024/2025 cam­paign was not dri­ven by legit­i­mate mar­ket dynam­ics. Those sources sug­gest that they could be the result of opaque finan­cial oper­a­tions that directly impacted the income of Tunisian grow­ers.

According to Jeune Afrique mag­a­zine, some export com­pa­nies man­aged to sell Tunisian olive oil to Spanish buy­ers at €2.80 per kilo­gram, below the offi­cial price of €3.40.

According to reports in Business News Tunisia, these oper­a­tions were man­aged by com­pa­nies led by Adel Ben Romdhane, a major Tunisian exporter. The busi­ness­man is said to have left the coun­try and relo­cated to Spain, leav­ing behind an esti­mated €132 mil­lion in debt, accord­ing to Il Boursa.

The Italian finan­cial news­pa­per Italia Oggi reported that sev­eral com­pa­nies led by Ben Romdhane are affected by the scale of those debts, esti­mat­ing his total lia­bil­i­ties at more than €180 mil­lion, includ­ing bank loans and unpaid checks.

If large vol­umes of olive oil were involved in such low-priced sales, quo­ta­tions of Tunisian olive oil could have been sig­nif­i­cantly affected.

In a fol­low-up arti­cle, Italia Oggi reported that the low-price sales are still ongo­ing. Its sources said that major Spanish buy­ers are cur­rently nego­ti­at­ing large vol­umes of Tunisian olive oil ​“for a price way lower than the offi­cial mar­ket prices.”

If con­firmed, such trans­ac­tions are expected to affect olive oil prices dur­ing the 2025/2026 cam­paign across all major mar­kets.

Over the past year, Tunisian farm­ers and millers have faced one of the harsh­est crises in mem­ory, marked by col­laps­ing prices that led to unhar­vested olives and mount­ing debts.

In the first months of the 2024/2025 cam­paign, Tunisian grow­ers protested against prices they deemed too low to cover pro­duc­tion costs. Some refused to pro­ceed with the har­vest as the value of the fruit col­lapsed.

From December 2023 to December 2024, olive oil prices in Tunisia dropped from €7.50 to less than €3 per liter.

Last December, Business News Tunisia reported that despite record har­vests, ris­ing costs, and over­sup­ply, the sec­tor was ​“falling apart,” and many millers were slid­ing into bank­ruptcy.

Several agri­cul­tural asso­ci­a­tions in Italy have called for judi­cial inves­ti­ga­tions into what they con­sider among the largest frauds in the his­tory of olive oil pro­duc­tion and trade in the Mediterranean.

“If the press reports are con­firmed by the judi­ciary, we would be faced with an unprece­dented fact: inter­na­tional money laun­der­ing to spec­u­late on olive oil,” said Gennaro Sicolo, pres­i­dent of ItaliaOlivicola and national vice pres­i­dent of CIA Agricoltori Italiani.

“The poten­tial dam­age is not only for Tunisian and Spanish farm­ers, but also affects Italy and the entire Mediterranean,” he added.

Sicolo, who is also an IOC offi­cial, said, ​“Tunisia can­not become the soft under­belly of the inter­na­tional olive oil mar­ket. In my capac­ity as vice pres­i­dent of the Advisory Committee of the International Olive Council, I will raise the issue.”

The Italian pro­duc­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion Unapol also expressed ​“deep con­cern” over the alleged finan­cial scan­dal.

“At a par­tic­u­larly del­i­cate moment for the sec­tor, on the eve of a har­vest cam­paign awaited with great hope, Unapol strongly reit­er­ates that any opaque or spec­u­la­tive maneu­ver at the inter­na­tional level risks seri­ously com­pro­mis­ing the bal­ance of the mar­ket and the eco­nomic sta­bil­ity of thou­sands of olive grow­ers and millers,” the asso­ci­a­tion said.

In recent weeks, Olive Oil Times has reached out to Adel Ben Romdhane, but no reply had been received at the time of pub­li­ca­tion.

Attempts to con­tact Bioliva, the Tunisian trad­ing com­pany headed by Ben Romdhane and iden­ti­fied by sev­eral sources as cen­tral to the dis­counted oper­a­tions, also went unan­swered.

Olive Oil Times con­tacted Borges International Group, a large Spanish com­pany cited in some reports as one of the com­pa­nies inter­ested in pur­chas­ing the dis­counted olive oils.

In a note to Olive Oil Times, Borges International Group said:

“In 2019 Borges Group sold its busi­ness in Tunisia. This trans­ac­tion remains pend­ing in terms of pay­ment col­lec­tion, and under no cir­cum­stances do we retain any share­hold­ing con­trol nor involve­ment on this busi­ness.

Furthermore, it should be duly noted that Borges Group main­tains no cor­po­rate, own­er­ship, or part­ner­ship rela­tion­ship with the Tunisian com­pany Bioliva.”