Introducing
The Story of Geelong Region Olives
Geelong Region Olives evolved in late 2018 from Mt Moriac Olives out of necessity to build a sustainable and viable business in the boutique Olive Oil market.
Our Story Begins
With 1500 Olive trees planted on 6ha of the Oolgarinna farm in Modewarre by the Weller family, Mt Moriac Olives was envisioned as a small boutique producer of fine quality EVO Oils created from the main plantings of Italian Frantoio and Leccino, and Spanish Picual and Arbequina varieties.
With the trees just beginning to fruit, circumstances changed for the Weller's and the Parker family were given the opportunity and acquired the property and four year old business in 2004.
Ten years further on and with a dream to put this region on the map as a major boutique producer of quality EVO Oils, Stephen Parker decided to scale up with an innovative business model collaborating with other property owners in the region. In late 2018 he launched Geelong Region Olives. And so the story begins...
The approach to expanding was constrained by capital and time...
More trees were essential, and time was of the essence. It was clearly obvious that to plant more trees on the land would have taken close to 10 additional years to be fully productive.
The approach taken was therefore to collaborate with many of our colleagues in our region who were all in effect dealing with the same situation.
The net result was that we became the lead entity and took on the responsibility of fully maintaining the groves of those who wanted to become our associate partners. Our payment was the fruit and our costs were the whole process including sales and marketing. Our partners returns were either money, oil, finished product or a combination thereof. Their benefit was a maintained and productive grove that has market value and does not require any of their effort to maintain.
We own the oil, sell and the market the products by focusing on provenance and terroir of the oils.
We have a large range of boutique oils that are under one roof which is appealing to trade, food service and consumers alike.
Our goal is for the region to be seen by everyone as the boutique oil producing region of our state and country.
For this to be achievable there must be a viable boutique oil business model and not simply one brand and a limited range. We see the region evolving to have a range of ultra-premium brands, a range of contract growers and a few bigger producers of quality value products all hopefully with GRO as their supporting partner.
We think our approach is different for this industry – although not unique in agriculture. We try to make it a win-win relationship and keep our associates informed with what is happening. We are confident that our associates appreciate our approach and what we are doing."