New Zealand’s olive oil industry consists of 350,000 olive trees studding valleys, slopes and ridges, hugging coastlines and skirting mountains, rivers and lakes – stretching from the far north of Northland all the way down to Central Otago. The trees produced around 2,000 tonnes of olives this year equating to approximately 270,000 litres of oil. We’re a small producer: our neighbours across the Tasman harvested 8,800 tonnes in 2020, producing approximately 9.6 million litres, but that was a light year. In 2019, the harvest was 19,736 tonnes, yielding 21.5 million litres of oil. Meanwhile, to estimate the production of Spain, the world’s largest producer by far, you need to multiply that amount by 100.
Our production is a mere drop in a bucket you could say. But what a drop!…
