Coldiretti: oil from Tunisia drives down prices and companies have to sell at a loss

The wave of cheap olive oil from Tunisia is putting pressure on the Italia market, pushing prices down and forcing many companies to sell at a loss. This is the alarm raised by Coldiretti to the Financial Times.

In the first ten months of 2025, the organisation points out, Tunisian imports grew by around 40% just as harvesting in Italia was starting.

"It will be very difficult to recover prices," warns Vice-President David Granieri, accusing the bottling industry of using foreign oil to squeeze domestic prices.

Tunisian oil enters Italy at around EUR 3.50 per kilo, a threshold that makes competition unsustainable for many producers. The industry, however, defends itself: Assitol notes that imports are inevitable, given the structural shortage of production, and that the price drop also reflects the recovery of Mediterranean production after two years of drought.

Italy remains heavily dependent on foreign oil: in 2025, more than 500 thousand tonnes of oil will be exported, against a domestic production of around 300 thousand tonnes. The confrontation with Tunis is being played out on sensitive European ground: the Tunisian government is pushing to double the quota of oil that can be exported to the EU without tariffs to 100,000 tonnes. The proposal, however, requires the green light from the member countries, which are under increasing pressure from the agricultural world, also in light of the agreement signed in January with Mercosur.