Azerbaijan President Inaugurates Country's Largest Olive Mill

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev attended the open­ing cer­e­mony of the coun­try’s largest table olive and olive oil mill ear­lier this month.

Operated by the Absheron Olive Gardens, the mill was opened in the coun­try’s most pro­duc­tive olive-grow­ing region ahead of an antic­i­pated boom in pro­duc­tion.

“We plan to make max­i­mum use of unused land for olive pro­duc­tion, espe­cially here on the Absheron Peninsula and in some other areas of Azerbaijan,” Aliyev told the event, accord­ing to local media.

Olive trees have dot­ted the Absheron penin­sula for cen­turies and are one of its main crops. However, plans are under­way to plant nearly 700 hectares of Manzanillo, Arbequina, Arbosana, Blanqueta, Koreneiki, Gemlik and Imperial olives on reclaimed land cre­ated by clear­ing rocky soil west of the cap­i­tal.

Once com­pleted, the project will cover 3,000 hectares of reclaimed land, with 1,000 hectares of olive groves planned for the com­ing years.

“We have cre­ated such a beau­ti­ful com­plex on a vacant piece of land,” Aliyev said. ​“Throughout his­tory, there was noth­ing here.”

Absheron Olive Gardens said they expect to even­tu­ally har­vest 10 tons of olives per hectare in the new groves, which will be equipped with an auto­mated irri­ga­tion sys­tem.

This year, the com­pany expects to pro­duce two to three tons of olives per hectare, prompt­ing its deci­sion to invest in the new mill. The com­pany added that it expects to trans­form these olives into 4,000 tons of olive oil, half of which will be exported.

Aliyev thanked the Italian con­sul­tants who helped con­struct the mill and said new projects would likely fol­low the mil­l’s com­ple­tion as olive grow­ing expands on the penin­sula.

“I think that this is why our coop­er­a­tion with your com­pany will be of strate­gic impor­tance,” he said. ​“Because there is poten­tial here, in Absheron, as well as in the reclaimed areas.”

“Of course, every­thing will have to be eval­u­ated – the land, the cli­mate, the pro­duc­tiv­ity,” he added. ​“But we have seri­ous plans to become an impor­tant pro­ducer. We also have plans to cre­ate thou­sands of jobs and local pro­duc­tion through­out the coun­try.”

During the cer­e­mony, Absheron Olive Gardens exec­u­tives empha­sized the need to fos­ter an olive oil con­sump­tion cul­ture in Azerbaijan, rais­ing aware­ness about its health ben­e­fits and organolep­tic qual­i­ties.

The open­ing of the new mill comes five months after Eldar Salimov, Azerbaijan’s ambas­sador to Jordan, met with offi­cials from the International Olive Council at its June meet­ing in Amman to dis­cuss join­ing the inter­na­tional gov­ern­ing body of table olive and olive oil pro­duc­tion.

“Azerbaijan will join the fam­ily of coun­tries that pro­duce and export olives and olive oil,” Aliyev con­firmed at the cer­e­mony.

• Azernews
• Axar
• International Olive Council