Tunisia shipped 87,980 tonnes to the United States in the seven months to July, against 80,810 tonnes from Spain and 57,880 tonnes from Italy, according to US Census Bureau customs data accessed via Cropli.

Italian volumes were down 31.1 per cent from 83,990 tonnes in the same months of 2025.

It is the first time since the series began in 2010 that the leading supplier by weight over those months has been neither Italy nor Spain. Italy's tonnage was its lowest for the period except for 2013, and Tunisia has shipped more than Italy in every month since March except May.

Italy's loss is one of both volume and price. The dollar value of its shipments fell 35.1 per cent to $386.9mn, while the average unit value slipped 5.8 per cent to $6.68 a kg.

Tunisian oil landed at $4.10. Total US olive oil imports fell 6.3 per cent by weight to 259,950 tonnes, a far smaller decline than Italy's.

Part of the year-on-year decline was caused by 2025's surge in imports ahead of expected tariffs. The announcement of potential US tariffs on 2 April 2025 "resulted in a sharp spike of sales to the United States to get ahead of higher duties", the US Department of Agriculture's Madrid post wrote in its EU olive oil outlook in January.

Compared with 2024, a year without that distortion, Italian volumes are down 16.4 per cent, while Tunisia's have more than doubled from 42,720 tonnes.

The United States takes more than a third of the EU's olive oil exports outside the bloc by volume, ahead of Brazil and the United Kingdom at about 10 per cent each, the USDA's Madrid post said.

EU shipments there totalled 124,500 tonnes in the first half of 2026, down 20 per cent by weight from a year earlier, Eurostat figures accessed via Cropli showed.

STOCKS SWELL, PRICES SLIDE

Italy is losing the business despite the country's tanks brimming with olive oil.

Italian storage held 233,377 tonnes of olive oil on 31 July, 43.9 per cent more than a year earlier, the trade publication Cronache di Gusto reported on 18 August.

Italian extra-virgin accounted for 108,299 tonnes of that, up 139.6 per cent in twelve months, it said. Just over half the national stock sits in southern Italy, with Puglia alone holding 31.5 per cent of the country's total.

Unsurprisingly prices have fallen in tandem. Italy's national extra-virgin quotation was €4.85 a kg ($5.62) on 24 August, against an average of €9.59 in August 2025, while lampante, the lowest refining grade, rose to €2.79 from €2.32 over the same period, European Commission price reporting accessed via Cropli showed.

The gap between the two grades has narrowed to €2.06 a kg from €7.27. Spanish extra-virgin was quoted at €3.46 that week. The Italian series carries no national quotation between 27 July and 24 August, while the Spanish series was quoted every week through the month.

Italian trade is mostly in volumes booked during the previous campaign, with few purchases beyond spot deals, the trade journal TeatroNaturale reported on 25 August. Quotations in Puglia and Calabria sit below €5 a kg, at around €4.60 to €4.80 at Bari, and only Sicily is holding up, at a wholesale average of about €7.50 a kg on IsmeaMercati figures.

Stocks rose "above all because there was a large production in Spain and because prices had reached levels above those sustainable for the market", Tiziano Caruso, formerly professor of tree crops at the University of Palermo, told Cronache di Gusto on 18 August.

"Italy does not set the international price of oil. Spain, Tunisia and Morocco do," he said. "The productive capacity of Spain, of Greece itself, of Tunisia and Morocco is such that they set the prices."

Tunisia's lead may be short-lived. The country "has almost finished its exportable product", with prices generally 10 to 20 cents below the Spanish, TeatroNaturale said, and its coming crop is expected to be well below the last and in line with Italy's. That fall will probably be offset by a production boom in Turkey.

RECORD AUGUST HEAT

The crop that will refill next year's tanks across Europe has yet to be measured, on the back of record summer temperatures.

Six of Cropli's seven Italian olive monitoring points, in Puglia, Calabria and Sicily, recorded their hottest 1 to 29 August in 48 years, with mean daily maxima 2.66°C to 4.80°C above the 1991-2020 normal, ERA5 reanalysis data accessed via Cropli showed.

Summer temperatures influence fruit development, the USDA report said, and last year olive trees in Puglia "entered fall under considerable hydric stress from prolonged summer drought, resulting in unusual fruit-drop".

This year rainfall was above normal at four of the seven points but Corato, in Puglia, was badly short, at 1.2mm for the month against a normal of 16.9mm. Forecasts to 19 September show the heat breaking and rain returning to both Puglia and Tuscany, on Open-Meteo data accessed via Cropli.

TeatroNaturale expects the Italian campaign to come in below the last one and "well under 300,000 tonnes".

The whole of the south will suffer the alternate bearing that follows a large crop, least in Puglia and Sicily and most in Calabria, and a recovery in central Italy will not make up the difference, it said.

The USDA put the 2025/26 crop at a preliminary 280,000 tonnes, with Puglia, Calabria and Sicily accounting for about 80 per cent of output.

Italy's producer bodies have yet to publish a 2026/27 estimate. The only official forecast, from the European Commission on 8 July, expects a more abundant EU campaign on favourable weather during flowering and good water availability.