The Olive Press

The Olive Press is a company based in the Wairarapa that has been pressing olives in the district since 2001. Their new pressing and bulk oil storage facility and retail shop was opened in Greytown in May 2015.

Olives have been valued from ancient times for food, edible oil, and oil used in lamps. It was also prescribed for burning in sanctuary lamps, for anointing, medicine and cosmetics.

Methods of pressing the oil and pickling vary from country to country. The finest grades of extra virgin oil are cold pressed and used for medicine and culinary purposes. These are usually clear, golden yellow, with a distinct aroma.

Commercial olive-growing in NZ began in Blenheim when Gidon Blumenfeld imported new cultivars from Israel in the late 1980s. In the 1990s, oil from Blenheim olives received an extra-virgin rating – the highest standard. Once it was known that New Zealand could produce high-quality olive oil, interest in growing olives blossomed. By 2006 1 million olive trees had been planted over 2,600 hectares, evenly split between the North and South islands.

Olive trees are productive for over 100 years. They grow in a wide range of soils and thrive in soils with a pH of up to 8.5. Harvest in New Zealand is from April to June.

In 2004 the domestic oil market was worth $2.3 million and exports, $600,000.

The Olive Press is owned by local shareholders and growers. The business operates the press, trades in bulk oil and provides storage and bottling services and also pruning and maintenance for growers. Bruce McCallum was involved in the board that owned the press. When he moved to the Wairarapa he made an offer to buy out most of the shareholders.

He says the challenge was to take the business out of something that only cranked up during the olive harvest season and then was mothballed for the rest of the year. The company has now developed a business that operates right throughout the year.

Wairarapa can proudly lay claim to being one of New Zealand’s dominant olive growing territories. It’s growers won the majority of the 2014 Awards and The Olive Press won Best Processor.

Loopline Olives north of Masterton took out the 2014 Best in Show in the Olives New Zealand Extra Virgin Olive Oil Awards as well as Best in Class in the commercial medium single varietal class, which was the top award of the night.

Loopline also gave credit to The Olive Press for their award.

The basic steps in making olive oil are always the same, no matter what kind of equipment is used. The first step is cleaning the olives and removing the stems, leaves, twigs, and other debris collected at harvest.

The olives are then crushed into a paste. The purpose of crushing is to tear the flesh cells, causing the release of the oil from the vacuoles. The paste is mixed to allow small oil droplets to combine into bigger ones.

The next step is to separate the oil from the rest of the olive components. This used to be done with presses (hence the now somewhat obsolete terms ‘first press’ and ‘cold press’), but is now done by centrifusion, except in old facilities.

The oil is then left in tanks or barrels where a final separation, if needed, happens through gravity. This is called ‘racking’ the oil. Finally the oil can be filtered.

As part of taking the Olive Press business into a sustainable operation that operates right throughout the year, Bruce McCallum has made orchard management part of their operation. He observes that many of the groves established in the Wairarapa were put in by business folk from Wellington who didn’t have the time (or the inclination in some cases) to put in the work required to get good production from their groves. The other issue is that many of the groves aren’t big enough to provide a consistent viable income.