Avocado growers aim high

By PHILIPPA STEVENSON agricultural editor

Two companies are confidently predicting that the launch of their separate brands of eating-quality avocado oil will boost the already burgeoning avocado sector and create a new industry in New Zealand.

Bay of Plenty-based Avocado Oil NZ unveiled its "The Grove Avocado Oil" at last year's Ellerslie Flower Show.

General manager Andrew Logan is happy with the level of acceptance since, especially as the market has had to be educated about the new product.

The company is selling mainly through upmarket delicatessens here, and Mr Logan is delighted that it is about to export the first "token amount" to London's top-notch Fortnum and Mason. "It hasn't required a hard sale programme but we are riding on the good work of the olive oil people," he says.

The links with olive oil are strong.

Like Chris Nathan of Kerikeri-based Olivado NZ, which launched its Olivado Avocado Oil last month, Mr Logan is a budding olive grower who thought olive-pressing equipment was too expensive to be sitting idle most of the year.

Working independently, the men investigated adapting equipment designed for olives to the avocados being grown in rapidly increasing amounts in their regions.

About 70 per cent of New Zealand's avocado crop is grown in the Bay of Plenty, and most of the rest in Northland. Plantings are also going ahead around Gisborne.

With three-quarters of the trees yet to reach full production, the crop is expected to grow by up to 40 per cent a year for the next eight years, without including new plantings.

This year's harvest of around 8500 tonnes is forecast to have increased to 44,000 tonnes by 2010.

Mr Logan says adapting the olive-pressing equipment for avocados proved easy.

"It was bizarre no one had done it."

But not only was cold-pressing avocados unique, so was producing a food oil.

Mr Nathan, a former chef, says avocado oil is relatively unknown around the world.

"In other countries avocado oil is produced by chemical rendering of rotten fruit and it is used as a base product for cosmetics because of its high vitamin E content."

Extensive research turned up a couple of food oil products but none appeared to be of the quality associated with cold pressing and they had made little market impact.

A Massey University student, Cecilia Requejo-Tapia, last year presented a thesis on avocado production which canvassed the prospects for oil from the fruit.

"From the nutrition point of view, the ratio of monounsaturated (oleic and palmitoleic acid) to saturated fatty acids (palmitic acid) and the ratio of polyunsaturated (linoleic and linolenic acid) to saturated fatty acids found for the Far North and Te Puke regions compare favourably with those of the recommended olive oil," she reported.

The findings suggested that avocado oil, like olive oil, helped to lower cholesterol and could be regarded as a high-value product from a nutritional and commercial point of view, she said.

Mr Nathan says avocado oil has the potential to become a popular food product because of its excellent health properties and smooth taste.

It also has a high smoking point - a measurement of the temperature at which it smokes or burns. Avocado oil's smoking point is 271 degrees C compared with 176.6 for olive oil.

The two oils will be complementary, says Mr Nathan, whose company owns a 12ha olive grove of more than 3000 trees. Olivado intends producing olive oil from next year.

The company says it will create up to 18 new jobs and also expects a tourism spin-off from its Tuscan-style factory near Kerikeri, where there are also plans for a restaurant and shop.

Mr Logan's company is backed mainly by avocado growers.

The additional local outlet for their fruit has been welcomed by the around 600 avocado growers nationwide, whose exports are expected to be worth $20 million this year.

The editor of the industry publication Avo Seed, Rosalie Smith, says growers have been paid around $12 a bushel crate for fruit that might otherwise have ended up on the local market.

She says that is a good price, which helped to raise the quality of fruit in the local market.