California Olive Ranch Joins with S. American Producers in New 'Americas Blend'

The leading American olive oil producer is sourcing oils from South America in its continuing pursuit of market share.

By Joanne Drawbaugh
Aug. 16, 2017 12:12 UTC
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For the largest American olive oil pro­ducer, California Olive Ranch (COR), it’s all about grow­ing: not olives, but mar­ket share.

Instead of slug­ging it out with smaller com­peti­tors for the lim­ited sup­ply of expen­sive home­grown fruit, the Chico-based com­pany led by CEO Gregg Kelley is con­tin­u­ing its emer­gence as a mar­keter of high-qual­ity olives oils made in California — and else­where.

COR raised eye­brows a few years back when it acquired the award-win­ning Italian brand Lucini at a time when bad-mouthing the qual­ity of imported olive oils was prac­ti­cally a sport in the local indus­try.

The Lucini acqui­si­tion sig­naled that COR had its sights more on sales growth than empha­siz­ing the American pedi­gree of its prod­uct range. Our love of high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil extends beyond California,” the com­pany affirms on its web­site.

Now, COR, whose sales report­edly exceed $100 mil­lion, has announced a lim­ited-edi­tion release of its new Americas Blend, made with South American oils that will be avail­able through December in a 1.4‑liter Chef Size” bot­tle.

The Americas Blend results from COR’s part­ner­ships with pro­duc­ers in South America — includ­ing Argentina, Peru and Chile — and fea­tures fifty per­cent Californian and fifty per­cent South American extra vir­gin olive oil,” com­ing together to cre­ate a mild fruity fla­vor with approach­able bit­ter­ness,” the com­pany said.

We value the shar­ing of process and infor­ma­tion amongst pro­duc­ers in order to increase the qual­ity of extra vir­gin olive oil through­out the world,” said COR, which has thrown its con­sid­er­able weight behind a strat­egy which acknowl­edges that qual­ity olive oil, and higher prof­its, have no bound­aries.



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