Price action

The 20 July low of 3.43€ has done what a floor should: four weeks inside 3.43–3.57€, an August retest that stopped at 3.45€, a higher low, and the price back at 3.55€. After four months in which every bounce was sold within days, a market that simply stops falling is itself information.

Fundamentals

The floor appeared without any surge in demand. Mills moved 91.4 kt in June and 95.3 kt in July, 17–23% below the four-campaign norm, and cumulative offtake reached 1,167.7 kt by 31 July. The support is seller behaviour, not buying: sellers have stopped following prices lower, and August's thin trade makes that reluctance decisive.

The other side

AICA counted 568.7 kt in store at 31 July, 11.3% above the 510.7 kt of a year earlier, and the desk currently estimates Spain enters 2026/27 with a carry-over above 300 kt: balance rather than scarcity, with a crop the sector's round table already puts above 1.4 Mt taking shape behind it. Current prices still assume that large crop arrives intact.

Desk conclusion

Base case: prices hold 3.40–3.65€ while the market waits for a clearer view of 2026/27, then firm modestly toward 3.70–3.90€ into the new year, provided the official estimates land inside the desk's central 1.40–1.55 Mt band. The firming would be a repricing of seller psychology, not of supply: fresh oil carries no urgency to be sold, co-operatives start the season without a backlog, and the leverage behind hand-to-mouth buying fades with it. The asymmetry is narrower than a month ago, but it still favours the patient buyer over the forced seller.

In full: what would change our view

A weekly close below 3.45€, the August higher low, puts the call back to plain stable; below 3.43€ turns it down. On the crop: official estimates at or above ~1.55 Mt open the downside retest of 3.00–3.30€; below ~1.40 Mt, with positioning this light, a move back through 4.00€ becomes much easier to justify.

What the desk is watching

The 3.45€ higher low

The floor sequence is now 3.43€ then 3.45€. A close below 3.45€ breaks the sequence of higher lows, and the desk treats that as the market rejecting the summer base.

August offtake and stocks, published mid-September

The next AICA print shows how fast the 569 kt of 31 July is drawing down, and tightens the desk's above-300 kt carry-over estimate. A third month of offtake below ~100 kt confirms demand stays hand-to-mouth into the new crop.

The 2026/27 aforo against the 1.40–1.55 Mt band

The desk's scenario band, not an official forecast: inside it, the base case holds; at or above 1.55 Mt the downside opens; below 1.40 Mt the upside does. Until then the useful signals are rainfall, soil moisture, fruit retention and the sellers themselves.

The withdrawal mechanism's activation conditions

The marketing rule's trigger, opening stocks plus estimated production at 120% of the six-campaign average, is checked once the aforo and October stocks are known. Its existence may steady sellers before it is ever used; it is not a floor under the market.