Cocavo spreads the good oil further

Cocavo director Chris Nathan holds a container of his company's blended extra virgin cold pressed coconut and avocado oils flavoured with turmeric and lemon zest. Alongside him staff prepare to start the automated processing equipment which blends and packs the product at Cocavo's Whangarei premises. Photo / John Stone

Chris Nathan ranks among Northland's most talented business entrepreneurs, shrugging off the 2009 hostile takeover of the Olivado company he founded at Kerikeri to emerge as a Cocavo Ltd director with a contract to provide US retail giant Walmart with blends of extra virgin coconut and avocado oil worth $30million a year.

And he aims to spread the good oil further. With his colleagues heading Cocavo and its Extra Virgin Coconut Oil (EVCO) parent companies, Nathan plans to build five coconut oil extraction plants around the Pacific to stimulate coconut farming in the region and provide Cocavo with high-grade oil to meet expanding international market demands.

It annoys me that governments distribute aid money to Pacific islands, but it never filters down to the farmers. The only thing to save them is to revitalise the coconut industry.

Chris Nathan

Nathan told The Country the extraction facilities would help lift hundreds of thousands of Pacific children out of poverty by providing their parents with income for growing coconuts, an industry now in trouble as prices decline for copra, or smoke-dried coconut flesh which needs a lot of refining to reach international purity standards.

"It annoys me that governments distribute aid money to Pacific islands, but it never filters down to the farmers. The only thing to save them is to revitalise the coconut industry."

Growing jobs in the Pacific

Nathan said he could sell coconut oil extraction technology to Indonesia, India or Sri Lanka, but he was more interested in helping New Zealand's Pacific Island neighbours.
Construction of an oil extraction plant was under way in Fiji, talks were being held for another in Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu was also a favoured locality.

An EVCO information paper says one extraction plant would be capable of processing 50 million coconuts annually to produce 4500 tonnes of extra virgin oil, valued at US$5kg wholesale.

Five extraction plants could produce up to 25 million litres of oil annually.

One plant processing 150,000 coconuts daily would employ up to about 78 skilled workers and would indirectly provide employment and livelihood enterprises for 37,000 rural dwellers. Each plant had potential export earnings of US$34 million a year, the information paper says.

After more than 20 years working with olives, avocados and other plants Chris Nathan, 59, is a master of the hi-tech skills needed for commercial oil extraction and since 2009 he has been in demand as a consultant for many avocado oil extraction plant construction projects around the world.

He set up Cocavo Ltd with Neville Montefiore, of Whangārei, in 2014 and with a third director, Roger MacDonald, of Wellington, and other investors formed EVCO International in 2016 and EVCO Pacific in 2017.

Cocavo has modest premises at Raumanga in Whangārei where six staff use a fully automated processing and packing line to blend and pack bulk supplies of extra virgin coconut and avocado oils obtained from overseas suppliers to create the cooking oil and products shipped to Walmart and other customers. A similar Cocavo packing line is to begin operating in California early next year.

Several new products are being developed which Nathan said were expected to expand the Cocavo range soon.