Olive trees have been grown for about 6000 years and olives have been a major calorie source in the Mediterranean for about 3000 years - hence were even more highly regarded than wine.
With the current global passion for healthy foods, saturated fats have become unpopular, and olives are an excellent source of mono-unsaturated fats. Olive oil reduces the risk of heart disease, and is said to prevent skin and breast cancer.
New Zealanders use twice as much olive oil as they did five years ago and we now import 20 million dollars worth of oil each year. This provides a huge incentive to produce our own olives and we can produce fresh green oil that can be sold, not only in New Zealand, but in niche overseas markets during the northern hemisphere off season period. The quality of New Zealand olive oil is extremeley high.
The markets for good quality olive oil are very much like those for good wines. Today many restaurants are selling bread and olive oil as an appetiser, as well as using fine olive oils in cooking and this trend is rapidly moving to the home. New Zealand brands are now appearing alongside the finest olive oils from around the world.
Olive oil is used in the production of soaps and is used extensively in the cosmetic industry.
The average yield of trees in New Zealand is about three tons per acre - at today's prices about $6000. Some of the trees in Marlborough have been yielding twice that amount, about 60kg per tree or more. The Tuscan olive varieties start producing after three years with full production after seven or eight years.
Growing olives profitably in North Canterbury
First you have to be able to grow them and quite simply not everywhere is suitable. Though olives cope with minus 10 degree frosts, for safe olive growing it pays to be in the region of minus 6 or 7 winter low. Not many places are that mild on the Canterbury plans or for that matter the Waipara Basin and many areas can get significant winter frost that will damage ripening fruit. From Amberley / Leithfield and out to the beach seems fine, anybody trying to grow olives in this area have had few problems even though they are on heavy soils. Glasneven to Waipara, Broomfield and Omihi flats all have the growing heat units you could ever want but unfortunately gets colder than –7°C so you would have problems. Waipara West, Waipara Downs and the North hill of Omihi where there is good frost drainage are fine.
Well the first question people seem to ask is, "Is there money in olives?" Well I don’t think it has been done yet but it would be fair to say that commercial scale (20 plus acres) olive groves are only a maximum of 7 years old or even less. If you are growing olives in a traditional Italian way you can probably kiss goodbye to the first 6 or seven years anyway. Picking your olives by hand and growing a traditional olive grove is going to make it difficult to compete with present growers. On the other had you are going to have some spectacular olive oil at home, and that is something quite significant to the palate and well worth having.
To be a successful and profitable olive grove you have to plan to not do any work.
It has to be done with the minimum of input, Roundup, a grape harvester, hedge trimmers and the bare minimum of pest spraying all done very intensively so you get good quick, early profitable returns, you can’t afford to wait for 7 years. But nobody is doing that yet, most people are aiming to have a pretty olive grove that is manicured and well mown and there is nothing wrong with that, but I’m not sure how profitable it will be. The olive industry has just begun and there is every reason to believe we will be better than the traditional Europeans.
