Olive Oil News

Micro food businesses abound in Tasmania, and Bruny Island Olives has its hand up for being the smallest and most exclusive of them all. Owen and Dianne Carington Smith are weekend farmers, caring for a tiny crop of table olives sold at only two shops. I joined a group of 18 family and friends and in three hours we picked half the crop one olive at time, no grabbing fistfuls and no mechanical assistance. There was a prize for the picker on the day who best guessed the size of the pick. Marge Direen’s guess of 165.5kg was only 14g above the 165.36kg correct weight.

The ultimate recipe for success calls for a splash of inspiration, a dollop of hard work and a tonne and a half of olives. That’s what seven young entrepreneurs have discovered with their company Caring and Co, founded as part of the nationwide Lion Foundation Young Enterprise Scheme. The Manurewa High School students have just put the lids on 300 bottles of their hand-picked olive oil, Unique Drizzle. The group has had sole charge of the project the whole way through, writing business plans, organising shipping and hand-picking the donated olives at The Estate on Waiheke Island.

Industry supplier Measurement Engineering Australia Pty Ltd has received a $290,000 Early Stage Commercialisation grant from Commercialisation Australia for further development of its PWS System. The system is a new irrigation scheduling tool which uses a Plant Water Status Sensor inserted into a tree to directly measure the plant’s water stress then wirelessly transmit the data to a central location. Data is used to optimise irrigation scheduling, ensuring lower water use, better crop quality and reduced energy consumption. Grant funding will be used to develop software and web integration, design and construct assembly plant, develop final product housing for robust product design, and to provide simplified data interpretation models. More information about the grant program here www.commercialisationaustralia.gov.au.

ONZ Executive Officer says that the organisation has been extremely impressed at the labelling and presentation of oils submitted for certification this year. So much so that a new award for Best Label has been introduced to the 2012 Extra Virging Olive Oil Awards, sponsored by mrlabels . This will be judged by mrlabels Managing Director Abbie Single and the Olives NZ Executive Officer Gayle Sheridan.

Canowindra farmer Sam Statham has taken out the inaugural 2012 New South Wales Organic Pioneers Award. “Sam first started growing grapes and olives organically in 1997 and is now widely respected in organic industry circles right across Australia,” says Department of Primary Industries acting skills and communities director, John Newcombe. “Sam is a trailblazer in the organics industry and has made a significant contribution to the development of the rapidly growing sector. Sam’s family business Rosnay is a certified organic farm producing winegrapes, olives and figs as-well-as value-added products such as olive paste, fig preserve and award-winning wines.”

Ongoing excavations at Silchester, Hamps. (CA 250) have uncovered the first evidence that Britain’s inhabitants were enlivening their meals with Mediterranean flavours before the Roman conquest – including Britain’s first Iron Age olive. Previously it was believed that only liquids such as olive oil and wine were imported across the Channel in the Iron Age. But now University of Reading archaeologists have found celery and coriander seeds – used as seasoning – and an olive stone at the bottom of a late Iron Age well, all pre-dating AD 43.

There has been concern following allegations by the ABC’s 7.30 Report of potential contamination in two product lines of Nutri-Tech Solutions (NTS) BFA registered farm inputs. NTS Fulvic 1400 and Nutri-Care were alleged to contain substances not permitted in organic production – nitrates and benzene. Australian Certified Organic (ACO) is conducting product tests on some 80 NTS products to confirm these results, while NTS is conducting its own product tests to determine the source of contamination. In the meantime a number of products have recently been withdrawn from BFA registration, pending test results: Backyard Boost, Backyard Blooms, K-Carb-35, Cal-Mag Life, Dia-Life, Gyp-Life, Lime Life, Mag Life, Phos Life, Nutri-Key Shuttle Seven, Life-Force Vita-Guard, Vita-Guard, Life-Force Stimulate, NTS Fulvic 1400, NTS Soluble Fulvic Acid Powder and Nutri-Care. An updated list of BFA registered NTS products for organic farming is available at: www.australianorganic.com.au. Organic growers who believe they have used any of these products in the past 12 months are urged to contact ACO prior to produce being sold, and are advised to temporarily discontinue using all Nutri-Tech products until the full investigation has been completed.