Olive oil growers in Wairarapa are optimistic about the season's harvest, despite some very wet weather to start with.
File photo. Photo: RNZ/Sally Round
Leafyridge Olives manager and grower Craig Leaf-Wright said the weather had thrown growers a curveball.
"We've had a lot of rain in the Wairarapa since December, and then on and off since then, and that kind of skewed things a bit for people," he said.
"Some people thought that their fruit was ripening earlier, I think it's probably about on par, and some people believe it should be a bit later.
"The thing is, the colour of the fruit is not always the best indicator of the ripeness, you've got to look inside the fruit."
Leaf-Wright, who is also the president of Olives New Zealand, said Leafyridge had not started harvesting yet, but had been pressing for some smaller growers in the region in the last few weeks.
Its presser Bill Hay, said it had processed about 15 tonnes of fruit so far, and while the harvest had been smaller than previous years, he was pleasantly surprised.
"We expected that being such a wet summer, the fruit would have a lot higher moisture content than it's actually got," he said.
"So consequently, we are getting quite good oil returns. Whether that's got something to do with being a wetter summer, even though the fruit appears to be still quite green, we are getting quite good oil returns, which is a good sign for the ones who leave their fruit on the tree a little bit longer.
"They should get some quite big surprises with the oil returns you're going to get the season, I believe."
Leaf-Wright said many growers had so far reported that total tonnage was down this harvest.
"We have seen people that we pressed for last year, bringing in around half the tonnage that they brought in the previous year, and that's a bit disappointing," he said.
Leaf-Wright said Olives New Zealand was working with growers to move their crops out of the biennial fruiting pattern the fruit could fall into.
"That comes down to, basically grove maintenance practices, and we're working to try and improve those to get the trees out of this biennial cycle.
"But that takes a lot of work, and it doesn't happen overnight, it takes time."
