`Pakistan's Olive Oil Industry Gains Momentum - Olive Oil Times
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Pakistan's Olive Oil Industry Gains Momentum

By Wasim Shahzad
Dec. 30, 2024 16:45 UTC

Pakistan is expected to pro­duce between 160 and 180 met­ric tons of olive oil in the 2024/25 crop year, a 20 per­cent increase com­pared to the pre­vi­ous sea­son, accord­ing to Muhammad Tariq, the national direc­tor for PakOlive.

Along with the quan­tity, Tariq is also sat­is­fied with the qual­ity of what has been pro­duced, attribut­ing the suc­cess to the hard work put in by the local pro­duc­ers and gov­ern­ment aid, includ­ing a 70 per­cent sub­sidy on pro­duc­tion costs.

According to Tariq, there are about 5.6 mil­lion olive trees in Pakistan, and 500,000 and 800,000 new trees are planted yearly.

See Also:2024 Harvest Updates

“Apart from the efforts on olive plan­ta­tions spread over pos­si­ble areas of the nation, a tar­get has been set to install drip irri­ga­tion sys­tems over 10,000 acres (4,050 hectares) of water-stressed areas,” he said. ​“This project aims to enable olive farm­ing on mar­ginal land and increase the income of nearby farm­ers.”

Tariq dis­cussed the lat­est har­vest results at the 2024 Olive Gala Festival in Islamabad, Pakistan’s cap­i­tal.

The annual event focused on extra vir­gin olive oil, sus­tain­abil­ity and devel­op­ing inter­na­tional coop­er­a­tion.

It brought together local pro­duc­ers, dis­trib­u­tors, investors, gov­ern­ment offi­cials and other stake­hold­ers in the country’s fledg­ling olive oil sec­tor.

“The gov­ern­ment is work­ing to sup­port Pakistan’s olive sec­tor,” Rana Tanveer Hussain, the min­is­ter of national food secu­rity and research, said dur­ing intro­duc­tory remarks at the gala.

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Rana Tanveer Hussain said the Pakistani government is dedicated to promoting the country’s olive oil sector. (Photo: Olive Gala Festival)

“Pakistan is for­tu­nate to have mil­lions of wild olive trees and pos­si­ble areas avail­able for more olive plan­ta­tions, demon­strat­ing that the efforts of our agri­cul­tural spe­cial­ists have now pro­duced pos­i­tive results,” he added.

Tariq was pleased with the num­ber of peo­ple attend­ing the indus­try event, which he believes is nec­es­sary to develop the sec­tor.

“Events like these are a great oppor­tu­nity for all stake­hold­ers,” he said. ​“This event has given a plat­form to busi­nesses and con­sumers and opened doors for many busi­ness-to-busi­ness col­lab­o­ra­tions.”

“The grow­ing olive indus­try is giv­ing more empow­er­ment to the local pro­duc­ers by help­ing them with oppor­tu­ni­ties and larger scale pro­duc­tion sub­si­dies pro­vided by the gov­ern­ment,” Tariq added. ​“This fur­ther promises the eco­nomic empow­er­ment that we aim to achieve through the growth of the olive indus­try in Pakistan.”

One way Pakistani author­i­ties hope to grow the sec­tor is through the incor­po­ra­tion of tech­nol­ogy from the very begin­ning.

Aiza Imran, Khaity Technologies’ senior brand exec­u­tive and sus­tain­abil­ity spe­cial­ist, said the company’s online mar­ket­place and mobile appli­ca­tion were help­ing improve effi­ciency and knowl­edge shar­ing for farm­ers nation­wide.

“Khaity App has been a key player in bring­ing tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment in the agri­cul­tural indus­try, espe­cially the olive sec­tor, with over 20,000 reg­is­tered users,” she said. ​“The app has cre­ated a dig­i­tal mar­ket­place where we col­lab­o­rate with dif­fer­ent ven­dors to pro­vide agri­cul­tural prod­ucts such as fer­til­izer, tools, etc., which farm­ers can buy any­where in Pakistan. Our unique propo­si­tion is that we pro­vide these prod­ucts to the farm­ers within 24 hours of plac­ing the order.”

“We launched an AI chat­bot for farm­ers on the app as well. Farmers can ask ques­tions and queries from this app,” she added. ​“This chat­bot can answer the ques­tions in all major lan­guages spo­ken in dif­fer­ent regions of Pakistan.”

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While Urdu and English are the country’s two offi­cial lan­guages, nine other lan­guages have more than one mil­lion native speak­ers and another 60 have fewer than one mil­lion speak­ers.

Khaity Technologies has also col­lab­o­rated with provin­cial gov­ern­ments on dif­fer­ent projects.

“We col­lab­o­rated with the Punjab provin­cial gov­ern­ment on the olive val­ley project in which we planted 1.3 mil­lion olive plants in the Potohar region of Punjab,” Imran said. ​“These plants were pro­vided at a sub­si­dized rate to help the farm­ers. We also pro­vided ease through sub­si­dies on water sources such as drip irri­ga­tion tech­nol­ogy.”

Along with tech­nol­ogy com­pa­nies, pro­duc­ers and farm­ers attended the event, min­gling with col­leagues and adver­tis­ing their prod­ucts.

Muhammad Azeem Tariq, the project man­ager of the recently launched Loralai Olives, shared his ambi­tions to begin export­ing Pakistani extra vir­gin olive oil.

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Loralai Olives is working to export its Pakistani extra virgin olive oil. (Photo: Olive Gala Festival)

“We aim to make inter­na­tional qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil and take the Pakistani prod­uct to inter­na­tional mar­kets,” he said. ​“We are work­ing on inter­na­tional cer­ti­fi­ca­tions such as European Union cer­ti­fi­ca­tions and Asian cer­ti­fi­ca­tions to be able to export the prod­ucts inter­na­tion­ally.”

Along with focus­ing on high-qual­ity mono­va­ri­etals, Azeem Tariq sees the neces­sity of appeal­ing pack­ag­ing; Loralai Olives recently won a brand­ing and mar­ket­ing award.

He also praised the role of national olive sec­tor events to bring the sec­tor together to share knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence and keep the momen­tum going.

“This year has been remark­able for the olive indus­try,” Azeem Tariq said. ​“We have seen an increase, not only in the fruit­ing but farm­ers’ pas­sion towards olive pro­duc­tion.”

“Through events like these, we want to raise aware­ness among the pro­duc­ers regard­ing the qual­ity of the har­vest, such as how to pre­vent any dam­age while pick­ing olives from the trees, he added. ​“Moreover, we also edu­cate the farm­ers regard­ing fruit stor­age accord­ing to inter­na­tional stan­dards. Furthermore, we have edu­cated the farm­ers to send the fruit from har­vest to extrac­tion within 24 hours to increase the qual­ity by fol­low­ing these para­me­ters.”

Other olive farm­ers present at the gala also shared their recent expe­ri­ences and touted the event as a way to make deals with sup­pli­ers and cus­tomers.

“These events allow us to show­case our prod­ucts to a larger audi­ence, con­nect with poten­tial buy­ers, and learn from indus­try lead­ers,” said Sabir Sultan, a pio­neer­ing pro­ducer in Hazara province. ​“It’s a sig­nif­i­cant step toward expand­ing our reach and build­ing a sus­tain­able future for the local olive indus­try.”

Arshad Qadri, another pro­ducer who runs Boston Farm, empha­sized the need to diver­sify and sell var­i­ous olive prod­ucts.

“We are a farm based in Kalar Kahar,” he said. ​“We have 12,000 olive trees and ten dif­fer­ent vari­eties of fruit from which we have cre­ated 17 dif­fer­ent prod­ucts, includ­ing extra vir­gin olive oil, tea, etc.”

“We are pleased with the growth of the olive indus­try. The con­ducive envi­ron­ment of our region has con­tributed to the suc­cess of the har­vest,” Qadari added. ​“Just last year, we pro­duced 55 tons of prod­uct… Events like these are a great medium for col­lab­o­rat­ing with other plat­forms and reach­ing out directly to the con­sumer.”

Producers also expressed the chal­lenges asso­ci­ated with the pro­duc­tion process due to the lim­ited num­ber of mills in the coun­try.

However, Tariq said the gov­ern­ment is work­ing to meet these chal­lenges and con­tinue pro­mot­ing olives as a viable option for eco­nomic devel­op­ment.

“Balochistan province has shown expo­nen­tial growth,” he said. ​“Despite the water cri­sis, the region has expe­ri­enced a growth in olive plan­ta­tion.”

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