Avo guru returns

Chris Nathan. Photo / Janna Dixon

The founder of troubled avocado oil company Olivado is having another go at setting up a business in the uncertain New Zealand industry.

Chris Nathan has set up Tauranga-based AvoHealth with former rival Andrew Logan, another avocado oil pioneer with his share of bad experiences trying to make a living out of the luscious fruit.

The pair believe their joint knowledge of the young industry is key, and are also selling that know-how to other avocado-oil makers as far afield as Spain and South America.

Olivado Holdings went into receivership last year owing $5 million - the culmination of a bitter dispute between Nathan and the company's main backer, film producer Gary Hannam.

Hannam did not want to keep funding the group with Nathan involved and gave the shareholders three months to find new backers. When that did not occur his company called in the receivers.

Nathan has accused Hannam of an orchestrated campaign to wrest the business from him.

Hannam's interests have bought Olivado's operations from the receivers for $2.3 million, less than the $4.3 million he has said he was owed.

This leaves nothing for the founding shareholders. Nathan puts his own losses at $2 million.

The business woes came on the back of tragedy. In 2007 Nathan's father Julian was murdered while working for Olivado's operation in Kenya. Soon after shareholder Alan Mountfort was shot in the back in Nairobi.

AvoHealth is about to launch its new range of products, including an unusual Flavours of India avocado and olive oil mix, and a white balsamic dressing made out of New Zealand sauvignon blanc grapes blended with avocado oil. It will initially target the European and British markets.

Asked why he wanted to re-enter the industry, Nathan said he liked being a pioneer.

"I've done it for so long - 10 years is a big chunk of my working life - and I can see the potential."

When Nathan set up Olivado in 2000 cold-pressed avocado oil was not widely made. New Zealand is considered an innovator of the product.

Meanwhile Logan helped establish rival Avocado Oil New Zealand in 1999.

He later went his own way and spent five years "commuting back and forth to Mexico" trying to establish a business there. No oil was ever made.

This time around the pair have not invested in their own plant, instead manufacturing under contract through Avocado Oil New Zealand which has the Grove brand.

The New Zealand avocado crop was notoriously unreliable, Avocado Oil New Zealand executive director Brian Richardson said. New Zealand was at the margins of where avocados could be grown and volumes fluctuated wildly from year to year.

That was why avocado oil makers had looked to other countries for more consistent supplies.

However New Zealand oil was considered to be the best. It and Olivado had tried producing in Australia, but the quality was not high enough. "When you looked into a 250ml bottle you ended up with a black sludge in the bottom."

Avocado Oil New Zealand had enough to supply itself for the next two years and AvoHealth to a certain level, he said. It supplied 400 supermarkets in New Zealand and 1500 in Australia so had to look after its existing customers first.

Meanwhile AvoHealth is keeping its options open internationally.

Nathan has spent the last two years based in Europe, developing avocado oil technologies such as processing and stabilising techniques and licensing that to companies around the world.

For example it had secured a plant for a company in Peru and would take a share in the operation.

"It is starting to grow back what was lost," he said.