South African Brands Shine Again at World Competition

Olive oil pro­duc­ers from South Africa are cel­e­brat­ing their sec­ond-best show­ing at the NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, earn­ing 12 awards (seven Gold and five Silver Awards) from 19 entries.

Entrants from the south­ern­most African coun­try have estab­lished their posi­tion in the com­pe­ti­tion, slowly but steadily improv­ing their rank­ing among Southern Hemisphere coun­tries.

Although the coun­try is still a rel­a­tively small pro­ducer com­pared to other coun­tries below the equa­tor, South Africans are increas­ingly focused on high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil: last year, pro­duc­ers earned a record-high 16 awards from 16 entries at the World Competition.

According to the South African Olive Industry Association (SA Olive), 95 per­cent of the olive oil pro­duced in South Africa each year is clas­si­fied as extra vir­gin.

The qual­ity South African olive oil pro­duc­ers have achieved over the years has also caught the atten­tion of local pro­fes­sion­als look­ing for the best oils for their busi­nesses.

“We get arti­sanal, fan­tas­tic prod­ucts,” said Cape Town chef and restau­ra­teur Christophe Dehosse. ​“There’s no rea­son to buy an olive oil that comes from Europe, 10,000 kilo­me­ters away.”

The country’s farm­ers have also embraced the cul­ti­va­tion of olive trees, mak­ing olive farm­ing the fastest-devel­op­ing agri­cul­tural sub­sec­tor in the coun­try, with a 20 per­cent annual growth rate.

In the 2024 crop year, which ran roughly from mid-March to early July, farm­ers and millers in South Africa enjoyed both a bumper olive oil crop of 1.6 mil­lion liters (around 1,760 tons) and high-qual­ity fresh oils in most pro­duc­ing regions of the coun­try.

However, the sec­tor had to over­come chal­lenges cre­ated by erratic weather and fre­quent power out­ages due to col­lapses in the country’s power grid. This forced pro­duc­ers to care­fully design and exe­cute their oper­a­tions to ensure the proper har­vest and milling of the olives.

Located between the his­toric town of Stellenbosch and Banhoek Valley in the country’s Western Cape region, Tokara Olives braved the unfa­vor­able con­di­tions dur­ing har­vest to win a Gold Award for its name­sake organic medium blend from Italian vari­eties.

“The Tokara team is very excited, as it was a huge achieve­ment to win a Gold Award at the NYIOOC,” said Gert van Dyk, the com­pa­ny’s oper­a­tions man­ager. ​“It’s a great moment to cel­e­brate suc­cess and moti­vate every­one to keep push­ing for excel­lence in the future.”

Van Dyk noted that Tokara’s road to suc­cess was bumpy this year, with weather extremes and a lack of rain impact­ing the company’s olive oil crop.

“Nature con­tributed to a cou­ple of extreme chal­lenges dur­ing the har­vest as we expe­ri­enced major crop losses due to a severe wind­storm early in April, while our nor­mal win­ter rain­fall was absent dur­ing har­vest,” he said.

“These phe­nom­ena con­tributed to accel­er­ated ripen­ing of our olive crop, forc­ing our olive mill to process a larger vol­ume of olives per day than nor­mal,” van Dyk added.

Mardouw Investments, another pro­ducer based in the Western Cape where 95 per­cent of the country’s olive oil is pro­duced, repeated its suc­cess in last year’s com­pe­ti­tion, win­ning another pair of Gold Awards this year.

Mardouw was awarded for its epony­mous medium blend from Favolosa and Coratina olives and its mono­va­ri­etal from Frantoio olives, extend­ing its win­ning streak in the World Competition.

“The awards mean the world to us,” said gen­eral man­ager Philip King. ​“We have always believed that we pro­duce world-class extra vir­gin olive oil, and to be awarded two Gold Awards at such a pres­ti­gious com­pe­ti­tion as NYIOOC again is a mas­sive honor. This also demon­strates our con­sis­tency as we have been awarded for six years in a row since 2019.”

The rel­a­tively new Favolosa vari­ety, FS17, was ini­tially devel­oped in Italy in the 1980s from the Frantoio cul­ti­var and is con­sid­ered resis­tant to the Xylella fas­tidiosa bac­terium. The cul­ti­var’s fruits are medium-sized, wine-red when ripe and have a medium-to-high polyphe­nol con­tent.

King said that Mardouw is also look­ing to increase its exports and is plan­ning to use the NYIOOC awards it has received as a new mar­ket bat­ter­ing ram.

“We want to grow our export busi­ness with a strate­gic focus on the East Coast of the United States,“ he said. ​“I am con­fi­dent that our con­sis­tency of per­form­ing well in the NYIOOC the past six years will help pen­e­trate our tar­get mar­ket.”

For 39-year-old Loyiso Manga, the owner of Ubuntu from the country’s cap­i­tal, Cape Town, win­ning an award from the NYIOOC was a life’s dream come true.

“I am excited and proud,” Manga said after receiv­ing a Silver Award for a del­i­cate blend, mar­keted in a dis­tinc­tively adorned bot­tle with tra­di­tional African designs.

“This win is for all the unem­ployed youth and those who desire to fol­low their dreams,” Manga added. ​“We have, and we’ve just begun.”

Ubuntu, named after a word made famous by Nelson Mandela that means com­pas­sion and kind­ness, is the first black-owned olive oil com­pany in South Africa.

Passionate about agribusi­ness and phil­an­thropy, Manga spent two years look­ing for an olive farm and gave life to his vision by finally found­ing Ubuntu in 2019.

“Ubuntu extra vir­gin olive oil is not just a flash in the pan,” he said. ​“it is the story of a dream come to life through hard work and a focus on the ben­e­fits that it will bring to the peo­ple it will come into con­tact with.”

The joy of win­ning at the NYIOOC has also spread to the nearby Breede River Valley, where Rio Largo Olive Estate was once again named among the world’s best olive oil pro­duc­ers.

“Winning an award at the NYIOOC, the largest inter­na­tional com­pe­ti­tion for extra vir­gin olive oils, is a sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ment worth cel­e­brat­ing,” co-owner Brenda Wilkinson said. ​“This recog­ni­tion not only enhances our brand aware­ness, par­tic­u­larly on a global scale but also serves as a bench­mark for our qual­ity com­pared to indus­try lead­ers.”

A multi-time win­ner at the World Competition, Rio Largo received a Silver Award this year for a medium blend and has won awards in six pre­vi­ous edi­tions of the com­pe­ti­tion.

“This award affirms our posi­tion as a com­pet­i­tive player in the mar­ket, inspir­ing con­fi­dence in our prod­ucts and open­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties for growth,” Wilkinson con­cluded.

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