The olive harvest is underway for major producer Boundary Bend, which is confident it will produce more olive oil than it did last year.
Speaking to the Weekly Times on Saturday, Boundary Bend Olives horticulture manager Ruth Sutherland said: “Crop quality this year has been excellent, and we are predicting to produce in excess of 10 million litres of olive oil.”
Ms Sutherland said the weather had been good for oil accumulation and tree growth.
“We are lucky to have not experienced any major disasters such as hail or frost,” she said. It has been dry, but we do irrigate.
“We check the quality on an hourly basis and we are very happy with it.”
“Timing is on par with previous harvests and the quality is the same as the long-term average,” Ms Sutherland said.
The harvest will continue for another five to six weeks.
Boundary Bend has about 3500ha of olive groves at the Boundary Bend Estate, with the largest area of the estate near Wemen.
About 1.3 million trees are planted, with five major olive varieties.
The company also has an olive grove at Boort Estate, which has about 900,000 trees on 2550ha.
Boort Estate has an on-site olive processing plant that can process more than 46 tonnes of olives an hour or 1104 tonnes a day.
Boundary Bend’s Cobram Estate brand is sold to more than 1500 supermarkets and export to the US, New Zealand, Canada, China, Hong Kong and Singapore.
