Historic Award for Iranian Olive Oil Producer Comes as Conflict Shuts Down Business

Summary

Saeed Shahmoradi, founder of Orum Araz Nikdaneh in Iran, won a Gold Award at the NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition for the Razbon brand, but pro­duc­tion has been halted due to bomb­ings in Tehran. Despite eco­nomic chal­lenges, Shahmoradi focuses on pro­duc­ing high-qual­ity olive oil and main­tain­ing direct rela­tion­ships with cus­tomers to build the busi­ness.

“It’s a tough time, and it was nearly too dif­fi­cult to con­nect to the inter­net for our con­ver­sa­tion today,” Saeed Shahmoradi told Olive Oil Times from the besieged Iranian cap­i­tal, Tehran.

The founder of Orum Araz Nikdaneh recently became the first Iranian olive oil pro­ducer to win an award at the NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, earn­ing a Gold Award for its Razbon brand, a blend of Arbequina and Koroneiki olives.

No sooner had Shahmoradi learned of the achieve­ment than the United States and Israel began bomb­ing Iran.

While Orum Araz Nikdaneh’s 50 hectares of olive groves are in the north­east­ern province of Golestan, where Shahmoradi is from, the company’s main office is 400 kilo­me­ters away in Tehran.

“It’s really chaos at the moment,” Shahmoradi said. ​“You hear the loud sounds of the bombs and mis­siles through­out the day and night. [On Sunday,] a mis­sile landed maybe 50 meters away from our office build­ing.”

“Everything is shut down now,” he added. ​“Our fac­tory is closed. Our office is closed. People are stay­ing at home and there are no sales. Zero.”

Shahmoradi entered the olive oil busi­ness after a pre­vi­ous career as an indus­trial engi­neer and project man­ager in the oil and gas sec­tor.

He said he was drawn to the mechan­i­cal side of olive oil pro­duc­tion and believed his tech­ni­cal back­ground would give him an advan­tage.

Shahmoradi entered the NYIOOC to receive feed­back from the competition’s judges on the qual­ity of his oil, hop­ing to use their assess­ment to keep improv­ing.

When the news of the award arrived, he said the entire team was ​“extremely happy” and imme­di­ately saw the recog­ni­tion as a way to per­suade skep­ti­cal cus­tomers to choose their oil over imported rivals.

“Every time we talked about our product’s qual­ity, peo­ple said, ​‘Well, every­body says that about their prod­uct,’” Shahmoradi said. ​“Before, we didn’t have proof, but now we can show them that the oil was rec­og­nized at the world’s best olive oil com­pe­ti­tion.”

“This is a big event for us,” he added. ​“I see it as a cat­a­lyst that pushes us to ele­vate our­selves. It also helped prove that our olive oil is value for money.”

Shahmoradi said the award should also help deepen con­sumer trust in the brand, which he sees as essen­tial to increas­ing sales of olive oil in Iran.

This year’s Gold Award fol­lowed a fruit­ful har­vest in Golestan province. According to the International Olive Council, Iran was fore­cast to pro­duce 62,000 met­ric tons in the 2025/26 crop year, slightly below the pre­vi­ous year’s total and the five-year aver­age.

Shahmoradi said the foun­da­tion of his award-win­ning suc­cess was an early har­vest in late September and early October. The green fruit was quickly trans­ported to a nearby mill, and the result­ing, cold-extracted extra vir­gin olive oil was pumped into a cool, dark stor­age room.

The blend of Arbequina and Koroneiki olives, which Shahmoradi said are among the most com­mon vari­eties in Golestan, is mild, with a strong aroma of freshly cut grass.

He said Iranians are gen­er­ally famil­iar with olive oil, and there is already a cul­ture of cook­ing with olive oil. Even so, many con­sumers still strug­gle to dis­tin­guish high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil from lower cat­e­gories.

While Orum Araz Nikdaneh sells its oil in super­mar­kets and hyper­mar­kets, Shahmoradi believes the best way to build the busi­ness is through direct rela­tion­ships with cus­tomers.

“We have also invested a lot in our online shop because we want to have a direct rela­tion­ship with the end cus­tomer and have the chance to receive their feed­back,” he said.

“Gradually, peo­ple find a brand they trust and stick with it,” Shahmoradi added. ​“Like in any other busi­ness, we must be patient.”

The com­pany also sells on Digikala, Iran’s largest online retailer. According to Shahmoradi, its olive oil is fre­quently the top seller on the site, often described as the ​“Amazon of Iran.”

But the country’s endur­ing eco­nomic cri­sis has left his pro­duc­tion costs sig­nif­i­cantly higher than those of imported olive oils on super­mar­ket shelves, many of them from neigh­bor­ing Türkiye.

“The biggest chal­lenge for us is the eco­nomic cri­sis tak­ing place in Iran,” he said. ​“I keep work­ing because of my inter­est in olives and olive oil, not my finan­cial inter­ests.”

“Inflation is high, so you can’t rely on prices stay­ing the same,” Shahmoradi added, not­ing that many busi­nesses buy gold or other assets to hedge against infla­tion instead of hold­ing local cur­rency. ​“You can’t always pro­cure the right ser­vices either, which is another big chal­lenge in Iran.”

As a result, Orum Araz Nikdaneh tar­gets a niche mar­ket of higher-income con­sumers and believes direct com­mu­ni­ca­tion is the best way to main­tain those rela­tion­ships and encour­age shop­pers to pay more for a local prod­uct.

“I pro­duce the best qual­ity olive oil I can and then cal­cu­late the price,” Shahmoradi said. ​“So the price is the price. I’m not focus­ing on price, I’m focused on qual­ity.”

Still, he said, ram­pant infla­tion makes it dif­fi­cult to know how much dis­pos­able income Iranians will have in the com­ing year and whether olive oil will become one of the expenses they can no longer afford.

Unlike many pro­duc­ers else­where in the Mediterranean, and unlike Tehran, which faced an urgent water short­age before the start of win­ter, Shahmoradi said Golestan has not suf­fered from drought.

He added that labor is also read­ily avail­able, mean­ing Orum Araz Nikdaneh has not faced the worker short­ages com­mon else­where in the olive oil world. Overall, he said, the agro­nomic chal­lenges have been far less severe than the eco­nomic and geopo­lit­i­cal ones.

“But we are not sit­ting idly,” Shahmoradi said. ​“We are wait­ing for the oppor­tu­nity to start up again and get back into the mar­ket,” after the con­flict with the United States and Israel sub­sides.