If you've been out for the weekly shop recently you may have noticed the 'extortionate' rise in olive oil prices.

It's been happening steadily all year in fact.

You'll be hard-pressed to find a bottle of olive oil in any store for under £5 nowadays and people can't quite believe it. Remember the days when 'golden bricks' of Lurpak were kept under lock and key? Similar scenes are now happening with olive oil.

A TikTok user filmed her 'cost of living' experience in Tesco recently, showing bottles of olive oil being kept on the shelves behind plastic guards. "This cost of living, people out here nicking olive oil, wow," she said.

"16 f******* pound."

Users in the comments couldn't quite believe it.

One said: "That £16 bottle I bought before covid for £5.50 at Sainsbury's".

Another commented: "Olive oil is no longer worth the price. There are better and cheaper oils for cooking."

Whilst someone else said: "£14 in the co op near me!!! I was in shock!! I would also love to know the reason for high prices."

"No wonder it's under lock and key. Extortionate," said another.

In mid-April, The Grocer found that the average price of one litre of own-label olive oil in the UK’s major supermarkets was £7.38 – 42 per cent higher than one year ago.

In August, olive oil was dethroned as Spain’s most popular oil, with shoppers turning to cheaper sunflower oil as an alternative.

It’s estimated that UK customers will soon have to pay more than £16 for a 2l bottle of extra virgin olive oil, the healthiest, least processed and therefore priciest member of the olive oil family.

Why is olive oil so expensive?

According to The Guardian, unlike other supermarket price hikes, the olive oil crisis can’t simply be blamed on inflation.

Producers are grappling with major supply and demand issues.

This year, the International Olive Council expects that just under 2.3 million tonnes of olives will be produced – slightly down from last year’s yield of 2.5 million tonnes, and significantly lower than the 3.4 million tonnes produced in 2022. This significant decrease is largely thanks to climate change.

A few consecutive years of high temperatures and droughts in Spain, the country responsible for producing 40 per cent of the world’s olives, have drastically curtailed the quantity and the quality of the harvest. 

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Jessica Fanzo, a professor of climate and food at Columbia University, explained how the most dramatic climate-related events impacting agriculture in the Mediterranean region include prolonged droughts, heat waves and wildfires.

“Temperatures in Europe were 0.75°C warmer the past two years than a 1990 to 2020 average, putting increasing strain on agriculture production systems, including water needs. Global production of olive oil has decreased in the last few years due to some of these prolonged events,” says Fanzo.

“[Because] most olive oil is rain-fed, prolonged droughts make it much more difficult for the soil to retain water, putting stress on the trees.”