South African Farmers Enjoy Production Rebound

Olive grow­ers in South Africa expe­ri­enced a fruit­ful har­vest, with pro­duc­tion vol­umes reach­ing their high­est in recent years.

“The 2024 olive sea­son for South African pro­duc­ers has been very suc­cess­ful,” said Wendy Petersen, chief exec­u­tive of the SA Olive, an indus­try asso­ci­a­tion.

Olive oil pro­duc­tion in South Africa is esti­mated to have reached 1.6 mil­lion liters dur­ing the 2023/24 crop year, a sig­nif­i­cant increase from the 1.2 mil­lion liters reported the pre­vi­ous year. Annual pro­duc­tion typ­i­cally fluc­tu­ates between 1.5 and two mil­lion liters.

“We have seen an over­all aver­age increase from pro­duc­ers of between ten to 20 per­cent, with the qual­ity of the extra vir­gin olive oil being very good,” Petersen said. ​“The excep­tional qual­ity of table olives and extra vir­gin olive oil this sea­son high­lights our pro­duc­ers’ ded­i­ca­tion and hard work.”

“This also reflects the favor­able grow­ing con­di­tions and the exper­tise that have con­tributed to achiev­ing such high stan­dards,” she added.

The grow­ing suc­cess of South African olive pro­duc­ers on the inter­na­tional stage, such as at the NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, indi­cates a shift in focus toward qual­ity.

These results also demon­strate the resilience of the local olive indus­try, which over­came numer­ous chal­lenges through­out the sea­son.

“The high input costs con­tinue to be a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge for our pro­duc­ers,” Petersen said. ​“Electricity and input costs remain major obsta­cles in agri­cul­ture, and the olive indus­try is no excep­tion,” she added, refer­ring to the fre­quent power out­ages that have afflicted the coun­try.

“The olive indus­try is also highly labor inten­sive, and this directly affects the price of the prod­uct,” Petersen explained. ​“Other than affect­ing the prices, it also directly affects the qual­ity of the final prod­uct if it is not processed imme­di­ately after har­vest­ing.”

South Africa imports large quan­ti­ties of extra vir­gin olive oil from abroad, and its net pro­duc­tion is lower than its con­sump­tion.

Competition from for­eign prod­ucts poses addi­tional pres­sure on the local extra vir­gin olive oil mar­ket.

“In South Africa, our pro­duc­ers are not get­ting gov­ern­ment sup­port, as is the case in other olive oil-pro­duc­ing coun­tries,” Petersen said.

“These price pres­sures resulted in cheaper imported oils to get on South African retail shelves and caused South African pro­duc­ers to com­pete with a sub­si­dized, cheaper and infe­rior stan­dard qual­ity imported prod­uct,” she added.

Moreover, the pric­ing of South African olive oils, par­tic­u­larly extra vir­gin olive oil, is directly impacted by the fact that these prod­ucts are not VAT Zero-rated.

“That influ­ences the com­pet­i­tive­ness in the mar­ket. Other plant and seed oils are VAT Zero rated, mak­ing the com­par­i­son on price an unfair com­par­i­son,” Petersen added, hint­ing that con­sumers are still very price con­scious.

Babylonstoren, a his­toric farm located at the base of Simonsberg in South Africa’s Franschhoek wine val­ley, reported excel­lent results for the sea­son.

“Overall, both the quan­tity and the qual­ity of the pro­duc­tion were strong,” said Petrus van Eeden, Babylonstoren’s olive oil spe­cial­ist. ​“We saw a slight increase in vol­umes com­pared to 2023, par­tic­u­larly with our Frantoio olives, as more of our trees have reached matu­rity.”

“The turn­around was bet­ter than antic­i­pated,” he added. ​“The qual­ity was excel­lent, with the oil meet­ing our high stan­dards and demon­strat­ing promis­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics in terms of its fla­vor pro­file.”

The farm faced chal­lenges, includ­ing extended sum­mer heat and late win­ter rains. ​“The heat cre­ated stress on the crops, while the late rains impacted the lat­ter part of the har­vest, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to com­plete it as planned,” van Eeden said.

At Rio Largo, a multi-award-win­ning olive oil pro­ducer in the Scherpenheuwel Valley in Western Cape, the farm antic­i­pated a slower har­vest than their record-break­ing crop in 2023.

“Quality was excep­tional, and we were able to get the crop off early before the heavy win­ter rain­fall,” said co-owner Brenda Wilkinson. ​“Some of our fel­low pro­duc­ers with big crops were affected by flood­ing and wet weather later in the sea­son, neg­a­tively affect­ing qual­ity.”

“Our olive oils dis­played higher polyphe­nols but remained bal­anced with very good oil yields,” she added. ​“Overall, our olive oils gave good aro­mas and a very clean mouth feel with lin­ger­ing pun­gency.”

Rio Largo had to con­tend with load shed­ding, a euphemism for state-planned rolling black­outs like many oth­ers.

“This is a chal­lenge for most South Africans,” Wilkinson said. ​“In our case, this was over­come with power gen­er­a­tion com­ing from solar power and a diesel gen­er­a­tor in the estate.”

Bad weather and unre­li­able ser­vices had a more severe impact in some regions. In those areas, expec­ta­tions were higher than the actual out­comes.

“It was a chal­leng­ing har­vest sea­son in times of a sig­nif­i­cant demand for olive oils,” said Nicole Koen, pro­duc­tion man­ager at Darling Olives. ​“The har­vest was a lot smaller than we had hoped for.”

Darling Olives, located about 70 kilo­me­ters north of Cape Town, is a well-known pro­ducer of extra vir­gin olive oil and table olives.

“The biggest chal­lenge for us has been to har­vest enough vol­umes to ser­vice the mar­ket,” Koen said.

He added that increas­ing con­sumer aware­ness is cru­cial for the pre­mium olive oil mar­ket.

“Although the prices of extra vir­gin olive stay higher than usual, we see con­sumers still buy­ing high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oils,” Koen noted.

Babylonstoren’s van Eeden also remarked on how con­sumer aware­ness should be the focus of high-qual­ity pro­duc­ers.

“There is still room for more edu­ca­tion and engage­ment,” he said. ​“As peo­ple become more health-con­scious and curi­ous about culi­nary qual­ity, they are start­ing to appre­ci­ate the ben­e­fits and ver­sa­til­ity of olive oil.”

The company’s olive oil spe­cial­ist warned that price pushed some cus­tomers to try afford­able alter­na­tives, such as avo­cado oil.

“I believe oleo­tourism could sig­nif­i­cantly boost aware­ness on a broader scale by offer­ing hands-on learn­ing expe­ri­ences and tast­ings, which would deepen con­sumer appre­ci­a­tion,” van Eeden said.

“Ultimately, pas­sion for olive oil, shared through authen­tic sto­ries and expe­ri­ences, will drive greater con­sumer aware­ness and loy­alty,” he con­cluded.