California Olive Ranch Gets $35M Investment

California-based pro­ducer California Olive Ranch (COR) said Wednesday it had received the largest equity invest­ment in the his­tory of the U.S. olive oil indus­try.

The equity invest­ment of $35 mil­lion was made by what the com­pany called ​“major US-based insti­tu­tional and exist­ing investors.” COR said the invest­ment will help make American-made olive oil a player on the global stage.

The funds will be used for expan­sion to accom­mo­date the rapidly increas­ing demand for California-made olive oil. In a press state­ment, COR said it will dou­ble its acreage, pro­vide more jobs and ​“pro­vide fam­ily farms with resources to plant more olive trees and grow their busi­nesses,” through insights gleaned from fur­ther research stud­ies.

The invest­ment will also sup­port COR’s envi­ron­men­tal efforts and a por­tion will sup­port the com­pa­ny’s ​“ongo­ing research within the organic space,” accord­ing to a rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

COR’s regen­er­a­tive agri­cul­ture project seeks to reduce the com­pa­ny’s car­bon foot­print. Every new acre acquired through the financ­ing deal will be planted using tech­niques the com­pany said will make its oper­a­tions ​“the first large-scale imple­men­ta­tion of regen­er­a­tive agri­cul­ture for per­ma­nent plant­i­ngs.”

“With the sup­port of our investors, this round of fund­ing sup­ports the plant­ing of new acreage for California Olive Ranch, but is also an invest­ment in the future of olive oil,” said Gregg Kelley, COR’s CEO. ​“This invest­ment will accel­er­ate the future of the American olive oil move­ment, inno­vate our sus­tain­able har­vest­ing meth­ods and rev­o­lu­tion­ize our pro­duc­tion tech­nol­ogy.”