There are a few grades of olive oil that are commonly used in manufacturing, which you may not recognize from a retail shelf. While you will most often see Extra Virgin Olive Oil on a retail shelf, there are other (lower) grades of olive oil that are sometimes used in manufacturing.

If you are currently researching bulk olive oil for food/body care production or you are a manufacturer, it will help to know the differences between these different grades.  Today, we will walk through how these olive oil grades are each made, along with how they compare to each other.

Have you ever sourced just plain olive oil? Understanding what you are getting can, at times, be confusing to most buyers outside of the oil industry. We want to explain the grade "Olive Oil" which is better known as "Pure Olive Oil" because many consumers don't fully understand.

Is there such a thing as “light” olive oil? To answer this question, you have to start with defining which type of “light” you are referring to.

Olive oil described as “light” does not mean that it is a low fat oil. What makes it a “light” oil is actually the particular grade of oil: “Extra Light Olive Oil”, “Light-Tasting Olive Oil”, “Extra Lite Tasting Olive Oil”. All of those terms refer to the type of oil inside, not that it is low fat.

Have you ever seen the price of Pure Olive Oil be almost as high as Extra Virgin Olive Oil? I have — most of us in the food manufacturing world have. And people often ask me why.

The answer is simple and complex at the same time. In a vacuum — in a perfect world — the price of pure olive oil should fall somewhere between Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Olive Pomace Oil. It is, of course, the olive oil grade between these two extremes (along with Refined Olive Oil) and pricing should correspond.

In the good harvest times, it follows exactly this pattern. But in times of poor harvest and bad olive oil production, the olive oil commodity market (aka, the simple economics of supply and demand) has more of an impact on the pricing comparison scale that you might expect.

A key part of R&D’s role is choosing the right ingredients for the job. If you (or your marketing team) is set on using olive oil, you will need to decide which grade is right for what you’re trying to accomplish.

Two of the most common grades are Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Pure Olive Oil (also called just ‘Olive Oil’).

There are a few key differences between these two types of olive oil when you look at them from your R&D or corporate chef’s eye’s. There’s also a few differences in how these grades are priced, which you should understand if you’re on the purchasing side of things.

If you go into the grocery store and walk down the olive oil aisle, you're going to find many different names on the bottles.  Names like Pure Olive Oil, Extra Virgin, Virgin Olive Oil and Light Tasting Oil. It’s true, the olive oil industry can be so confusing! Our goal here is to spell out the differences as simply as possible, so that you know what you’re buying.

What do these names on the label actually mean?

The two most common names that you’re going to find on that olive oil bottle from the grocery store will be Extra Virgin Olive Oil or Pure Olive Oil. Most people outside of the industry don't really know this, but these are the names for the different grades of olive oil which correspond to their quality and whether they been refined or not.