Olive growers racing to beat frost

BLENHEIM - A later than usual olive harvest in Marlborough this season has some olive growers racing to beat the frost.

Olives New Zealand president Edwin Pitts, who grows olives in Waihopai Valley, said too many cool days in autumn meant fruit was taking longer to ripen in many parts of Marlborough.

"In this last month, there haven't been that many warm, dry days, which are needed to speed up the fruit ripening process," he said.

"Later ripening means more chance of frost. Unfortunately it's not as perfect a season as last year, where we had no frost until mid-July," he said.

Cold, wet weather during the pollination period in December, coupled with a couple of very early frosts, meant that overall this year's harvest would be smaller than usual.

A few late frosts approaching harvesting this month had resulted in some frosted fruit, meaning it could not be processed for oil.

"The effect hasn't been huge, but in my case, I've lost about a third of my fruit because of frost effect. There are others in the same boat or even worse," said Mr Pitts.

However, certain parts of Marlborough weren't affected by frost and had very good crops this year.

Mark Heard, who has 10,000 olive trees in the Awatere Valley, said he was lucky that none of the frosts had hit his. Already mid-way through harvesting, he predicted this year's production to reach 70 tonne -- double last year's volume.

Mr Pitts said it was still too early to predict final volumes, with fruit still coming in, and the olive press at Blumenfeld going "full tilt".

However, he said fruit in general was looking good, and the resulting oils were expected to be as good as other years.

"The later season could well intensify the flavours," Mr Pitts said.

"The advantage of Marlborough is the intensity of flavour produced over the longer ripening period, when compared to the northern latitudes. It's the exact parallel to the wine industry -- the trade-off for greater risk of frost is a better quality product."

Olive harvesting is expected to taper off in mid July.

- nzpa