Supermarkets across Spain are reporting thefts of olive oil as demand and prices for “liquid gold” has surged in the Mediterranean.

According to the Financial Times, olive oil is now the most shoplifted product in Spain’s most populous regions, surpassing traditionally popular items for petty thieves such as razor blades, alcohol and ibérico ham.

The perpetrators are believed to be part of a criminal ring of bandits who have discovered a profitable fraud reselling olive oil, sometimes adulterated or diluted, on the lucrative global black market.

Extra virgin olive oil, a staple in Mediterranean diet, used to be commonly found for around €5 a litre (£4.26) but now can cost up to €20.

Extreme weather, drought, and the ongoing battle against the Xylella fastidosa bacterium that has been ravaging olive groves for the last decade, have all affected olive oil production.

Global production is expected to fall this year to 2.4 million tonnes, down 18 per cent on the previous year. Spain, Italy and Greece are the top three producers of olive oil in the world.

Some shops in Spain have resorted to chaining together large five-litre bottles of the oil to prevent theft.

Others have begun fitting security alarms that have to be removed at check-out, Greece has also reported theft of olives in the groves.

Panagiotis Tsafaris, an olive producer in the southern Peloponnese peninsula, has been robbed twice, with thieves using sticks at night to rake off the olives.

Entire branches

In some cases, entire branches are simply sawed off and loaded onto trucks for processing elsewhere.

Earlier this year in Italy, bandits were chased out of an olive grove near Bari, in Puglia by a security guard.

“It’s like the Wild West,” said Gennaro Sicolo, president of the Puglia agricultural consortium, who has been lobbying for more intense rural policing.

“What farmers and olive producers in particular are experiencing now is unacceptable.”

Authorities have also been cracking down on criminal organisations fraudulently using cheap vegetable oils to dilute what is being marketed as extra virgin.

Last October, Italian inspectors discovered over 500 bottles of olive oil whose contents did not match the label. 

In December, Italian authorities working in conjunction with their Spanish counterparts and Interpol carried out raids in the Ciudad Real region that led to the arrests of 11 people and the seizure of 5,000 litres of adulterated olive oil.