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<pre>Dear Mike,
You're right about the consumer awareness to the product. The Italian
is a very mature market when it comes to quality and it's easier market
such products.
I have returned home to Portugal and here the olive oil market is very
different, people are used to a mild "Galega" EVOO that goes well with
fish, and if you give them something stronger they thing that strong
bite has something to do with acidity and will reject the product.
In my opinion the OO sector must invest in consumer education that will
be the only way to defend ourselves from the other vegetable oils.
About the IOOC - Australia story, what i have been told is that, there
are problems over the linoleic acid content of some of the Australian
oils, it goes above IOOC standards (and according to IOOC couldn't be
classified as OO). So Australia with the help of the US forced an
change of the CODEX Alimentarius rules in order for these oils to come
in to standards. But this move backfired, the main OO consumers are the
members of the IOOC so Australia cant export to them (at least not that
easily). And on the other hand the IOOC countries that produce an OO
that doesn't obey to the IOOC standards, but comes within the rules of
the CODEX can export to Australia. These situation creates a kind of
"Legislation Dumping" effect, because where talking about oils that
cant be sold in the IOOC markets, and therefor have a very low price
and just flood your market.
The only strategy I cant see that will protect you from this situation,
other them consumer education, is creating a consortium that controls,
certifies and guaranties the quality and origin of the Australians OO.
Similar to what happens in Europe with the PDO products (for those who
don't know what they are :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect...tion_of_origin). The
Italian OO bottling industry recently created a quality consortium to
defend themselves from the Andalusian low quality oil, it guaranties
that the olive oil used obeys to quality standards.
Regards,
Joćo Correia
On 30 May, 2005, at 11:55, Mike Wilson wrote:
>
> Thanks for your comments Joćo, but we have a significantly different
> market
> here to Italy (I assume you are in Italy?).
etc ...
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