Award-Winning Producer Elected to Lead New Association in Croatia

The Association of Olive Growers of Zadar County has become the first of its kind in the south­ern Croatian region of Dalmatia.

The new asso­ci­a­tion of grow­ers was founded within the Center for Creative Activities in Zadar and has elected Ivica Vlatković as its first pres­i­dent. Zadar is located in north­ern Dalmatia and includes the wild mil­len­nial olive trees on the island of Pag.

Vlatković is a well-known pro­ducer from the munic­i­pal­ity of Novigrad and earned two Gold Awards at the 2021 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

From now on, it will be much eas­ier to com­mu­ni­cate and coop­er­ate on the improve­ment of olive grow­ing and pro­cess­ing, stor­age and brand­ing of increas­ingly high-qual­ity oils from the area of the county, said Daniel Segarić, head of agri­cul­ture in Zadar County.

Vlatković invited all olive grow­ers who care about the devel­op­ment of olive grow­ing and oil pro­duc­tion to join the asso­ci­a­tion.

The goal is to pro­duce, brand and sell qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oils at appro­pri­ate prices so that not only olive grow­ers but also con­sumers ben­e­fit, he said.

According to the lat­est data, Zadar com­prises 2,580 hectares of olive groves spread across 3,500 farms. Thirty-eight mills oper­ate in the county and process about 800,000 liters of olive oil each year.

There are also 43 cer­ti­fied apprais­ers of olive oil, accord­ing to Segarić, who also con­grat­u­lated Vlatković at the found­ing cer­e­mony of the asso­ci­a­tion.

He fur­ther applauded the 10 Gold and two Silver Awards earned by Zadar pro­duc­ers at 2021 NYIOOC. Overall, Croatian pro­duc­ers com­bined to earn a record-high 67 Gold and 20 Silver Awards at the com­pe­ti­tion.

Along with Vlatković, the young olive grower Josip Pavlica was named as the organization’s sec­re­tary. Dražen Travica was cho­sen to be the pres­i­dent of the Board of Directors. Šime Marcelić, Josip Kulaš, Željko Vrsaljko, Damir Vicković, Zlatko Strpić and Marinko Mikić were also elected to the exec­u­tive board of the asso­ci­a­tion.