Avocado oil company uses Oscars to get a foot in the USA

For the second year in a row a Kerikeri company is dishing out the good oil at Hollywood's Academy Awards.

When movie stars and Hollywood movers and shakers sit down to their exclusive pre-Oscars dinner at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills on February 27 they will be served a dish containing the New Zealand gold chilli and bell pepper-infused avocado oil.

Olivado managing director Chris Nathan said the hotel's head chef had said that he liked the "complex composition" of that particular avocado oil and had decided to create a special dish around it for the dinner.

Mr Nathan said that last year his company's extra virgin avocado oil was "a star ingredient in the main course".

He said this year dinner guests, some of the most powerful people in the Hollywood movie and media world, would take home a gift bottle of the spicy oil.

He hoped that the exposure gained at the exclusive dinner would boost the company's profile in the United States.

He said the gold chilli and bell pepper infused avocado oil was "not just hot, but very tasty". It won the 2003 Australian Fiery Foods award for best chilli oil.

The company's site operations manager, Phil Civil, said he thought it was "great" that their oil, produced in a purpose-built factory, was to share the limelight with Hollywood stars.

He said the oil was made from avocados too misshapen or blemished to export.

The skin and stone were turned into mulch, and the pastel green pulp crushed to a fine paste and pumped into a stirrer where the cells were broken down so that the oil could float to the top.

The solids were taken off for cattle feed, and the oil sent for bottling.

Olivado launched its first oil in November 2000. The press now employs seven permanent staff and five seasonal workers and the company is preparing to open a factory in Brisbane.

- NZPA