Gold for Tunisia Heralds Start of New Beginning

Winning entries at the 2017 New York International Olive Oil Competition (NYIOOC) included excep­tional olive oils from 20 coun­tries, with Italy top­ping the list with 123 awards, fol­lowed by Spain not far behind with 110. But national pride is prob­a­bly high­est in Tunisia for its first Gold Awards at NYIOOC: one for Olivko, and another for Zeet.

Olivko’s owner and founder, Karim Fitouri, was in New York to receive the award in per­son. He told Olive Oil Times how news of the win has been received in Tunisia:
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​“We’ve had con­grat­u­la­tions from fel­low pro­duc­ers, from the author­i­ties, the olive oil indus­try, and of course the press, which has reported exten­sively on the news of the award. The thing how­ever that mat­ters to me the most is the reac­tion of pride and warmth from ordi­nary peo­ple I meet, includ­ing the work­ers on our grove. This award has made them feel like their hard work and the tra­di­tion have finally been rec­og­nized and rewarded, and this will act as a moti­va­tor for even bet­ter results in the future.”

Gold-win­ning Olivko is organ­i­cally pro­duced and made with a Tunisian olive vari­ety called Chetoui, one of two major vari­eties pro­duced in the north of the coun­try. Fitouri’s farm is in the lush Dougga val­ley in the Beja region, which hap­pens to be an archae­o­log­i­cal site with UNESCO World Heritage sta­tus. Dougga is the site of the ruins of an ancient Roman city over­look­ing the fer­tile val­ley of Oued Khalled where olives were cul­ti­vated since the 8^th cen­tury BC.

With such a long his­tory of olive cul­ti­va­tion, it’s not sur­pris­ing that olive oil is cen­tral to every­day life here, as well as to Tunisia’s econ­omy: olive oil is the coun­try’s largest agri­cul­tural export.

“For us, olive oil is in our DNA,” said Fitouri. ​“We have a rela­tion­ship of 3,000 years with this tree and with this fruit. Most fam­i­lies in Tunisia own their own trees, passed down through gen­er­a­tions, so most peo­ple get oil from their own pro­duc­tion, alone or pooled with their neigh­bors. It’s col­lected directly from the mill every year after the har­vest, enough to last until the next har­vest. We use it in every­thing, and maybe we take it for granted. Olive oil is extremely cen­tral to the diet and over­all per­sonal care. Tunisians use olive oil for every meal, and a typ­i­cal break­fast, for exam­ple, is made up of bread and olive oil, maybe with honey on top — and of course we also use it cos­met­i­cally, for the care of skin and hair.”

A fam­ily busi­ness, Olivko has been pro­duc­ing olives since 1928. Though the lat­est har­vest sea­son was not as plen­ti­ful as the pre­vi­ous year, Fitouri was glad they could make up for this with a high-qual­ity oil. ​“A great sea­son is always fol­lowed by a tough sea­son,” he explained. ​“That is the way our trees behave, very up and down, all this Mediterranean tem­pera­ment I guess. Last sea­son the trees were not very gen­er­ous with quan­tity, but they were gen­er­ous with qual­ity. We paid atten­tion to details to get the most out of the crop, and were glad to see that rec­og­nized by the award.”

For Fitouri, the win rep­re­sents not only an impor­tant mark of recog­ni­tion for Olivko, but also the begin­ning of Tunisia’s trans­for­ma­tion from a bulk pro­ducer for the export mar­ket to a coun­try known for its high-qual­ity olive oil. He blames dif­fi­cult eco­nomic times and the polit­i­cal upheaval of recent years for the rea­son some pro­duc­ers ​“got greedy and lazy and were sell­ing their oil in bulk to Italy to be bot­tled there for dump­ing prices, hid­den under Italian brands.”

But he is sure of Tunisia’s poten­tial: ​“We have 80 mil­lion trees, a young and dynamic work­force, and an active dias­pora. But we need to be dar­ing, take chances and go out there with our name and our brands and be proud to be sell­ing our oil openly as a Tunisian prod­uct, a prod­uct of high qual­ity.”

During the 2014/2015 crop year, Tunisia had an excep­tional olive har­vest, pro­duc­ing a record 340,000 tons of olive oil, which put it in sec­ond place after Spain. It also became the world’s largest exporter, with 304,000 tons exported that year. According to International Olive Council (IOC) fig­ures, Tunisia is cur­rently the world’s third-largest olive oil exporter and fourth largest pro­ducer. Tunisia’s Office National de l’Huile (National Oil Office) lists the largest cus­tomers for Tunisian olive oil: Italy, Spain, the United States, France, and Morocco. Tunisia also exports refined olive oil to 39 coun­tries.

Fitouri believes that the time has come for Tunisian pro­duc­ers to focus on qual­ity and not quan­tity to finally get the recog­ni­tion it deserves. When asked what needs to change for Tunisian pro­duc­ers to achieve this, he evoked the need for more edu­ca­tion and invest­ment.

“Unfortunately a lot of pro­duc­ers are not up to speed on the lat­est tech­no­log­i­cal advances,” he pointed out, ​“so they need to be edu­cated to reduce waste and qual­ity lapses. And they need to be edu­cated to be proud of this crop and to sell it under their own name and the Tunisian flag, instead of in bulk to Italy to bot­tle. To be able to do that, there needs to be an invest­ment in infra­struc­ture for the pro­duc­tion, so even small pro­duc­ers are able to har­vest and bot­tle and export their oil on a level play­ing field with other coun­tries.”

“And after that, of course,” he added, ​“we need sup­port in mar­ket­ing and sell­ing the prod­uct because qual­ity can only be sus­tained if the effort is suc­cess­ful and there is money com­ing in. So in my case, for exam­ple, a small pro­ducer who just won a pres­ti­gious award for the qual­ity of his prod­uct, I need sup­port from the state bod­ies to reach retail­ers and new mar­kets that will open up to my prod­uct first, which will of course also pave the way for other Tunisian pro­duc­ers.”

Following Olivko’s achieve­ment in New York, Fitouri has been invited to a slew of con­grat­u­la­tory meet­ings with Tunisian offi­cials in London, Brussels, and Madrid before head­ing to Tunisia for media inter­views. He has also been given a vote of thanks in the form of a per­sonal award from the Tunisian gov­ern­ment in appre­ci­a­tion of his suc­cess and for putting Tunisian olive oil on the world map of qual­ity pro­duc­ers. Next up are meet­ings in Russia and Australia, before Fitouri heads back to New York for the Fancy Food Show later this week.

After spend­ing 24 years liv­ing in the U.K., Fitouri is happy to return to Tunisia car­ry­ing the cov­eted NYIOOC award and opti­mism for the future of the coun­try’s olive oil indus­try. ​“I came back to Tunisia to lead the peo­ple in the olive oil indus­try to make per­fect olive oil juice and change the Tunisian image for­ever. We are mak­ing his­tory here at the moment and I see this award as a his­toric moment for our com­pany and for the Tunisian olive oil indus­try.”

“But it’s only the begin­ning, and we need to keep the momen­tum. Tunisian oil can com­pete in the inter­na­tional arena and stand proudly on the podium with world class oils from pow­er­houses like Spain and Italy but we need to keep work­ing hard, talk­ing about qual­ity, break­ing down peo­ple’s mis­con­cep­tions, get­ting them to try it,” said Fitouri.

“So to any retail­ers and sup­pli­ers world­wide read­ing this on Olive Oil Times — write to me and ask for a sam­ple of Olivko, or invite me over to your coun­try to do a demon­stra­tion. Open your mind and allow this prod­uct that we made with so much care to trans­port you to the Dougga val­ley under the Tunisian sun. Give us a chance, we will sur­prise and amaze you.”

• Olivko


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