Chilean Producers Manage a Hard Year to a Promising Harvest

Despite the chal­lenges of an ongo­ing drought and the Covid-19 pan­demic, Chilean olive oil pro­duc­tion is expected to once again exceed 20,000 tons in the 2020/21 crop year.

Gabriela Moglia, the gen­eral man­ager of the National Association of Chilean Olive Oil Producers (ChileOliva), told Olive Oil Times it is still too early to give a pre­cise fig­ure, but all signs point to another good year for pro­duc­ers.

The Chilean olive har­vest starts in mid-April each year and ends in early- to mid-June. The country’s Mediterranean cli­mate is ideal for olive cul­ti­va­tion and gen­er­ally leads to high yields.

“This year, the har­vest began a few weeks ear­lier just to carry out good coor­di­na­tion and be pre­pared for pan­demic con­tin­gen­cies,” Moglia said. ​“Producers, who mostly export high-qual­ity olive oil, have demand­ing inter­na­tional stan­dards, so the Covid-19 sit­u­a­tion has sup­ple­mented their safety mea­sures with strict pro­to­cols to pre­vent con­ta­gion.”

Chile has been expe­ri­enc­ing drought con­di­tions for the past cou­ple of years, which has led to mount­ing con­cerns in the agri­cul­tural sec­tor and empha­sized the need for com­pa­nies to plan ahead.

However, there has been more rain in the cur­rent crop year than in the pre­vi­ous two, which helped grow­ers. One month into the har­vest, most pro­duc­ers expect to have a good year, both in quan­tity and qual­ity.

The lead­ing cause for con­cern stems from the absence of rain in recent weeks.

“This year, we are expect­ing an esti­mated pro­duc­tion of 2.8 mil­lion liters of con­ven­tional olive oil and 700,000 liters of organic olive oil,” Claudio Lovazzano, the head of mar­ket­ing at Olivos del Sur, told Olive Oil Times.

Olisur has more than 1,800 hectares of olive crops planted in San José de Marchigue and 500 hectares of organic olive trees in the Coquimbo area of north­ern Chile.

Meticulous plan­ning has allowed the company’s 60 employ­ees to oper­ate con­tin­u­ously dur­ing the har­vest while fol­low­ing health pro­to­cols.

Covid-19 has pre­sented logis­ti­cal and prac­ti­cal chal­lenges. While Olisur has suc­cess­fully kept its employ­ees safe through­out the pan­demic, this has inevitably caused pro­duc­tion delays.

Throughout the day, oper­a­tors run six har­vest­ing machines. Olives from the company’s super-high-den­sity groves are con­tin­u­ously deliv­ered to the mill, ensur­ing that the entire pro­duc­tion process is com­plete within two hours.

Lovazzano said this process ensures high organolep­tic qual­ity and chem­i­cal para­me­ters for the company’s award-win­ning extra vir­gin olive oil, which boasts low acid­ity and is pro­duced using a sus­tain­able and envi­ron­men­tally friendly process.

“At Olisur, each process is con­trolled and mea­sured, as we are the only olive oil in Chile and Latin America cer­ti­fied as car­bon neu­tral,” Lovazzano said. ​“Olisur is a mem­ber of the Clean Production Agreement and also has a For Life (cor­po­rate social respon­si­bil­ity) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion that empha­sizes not only the qual­ity of pro­duc­tion but also the work­ers and the com­mu­nity around us.”

Situated a few kilo­me­ters west of Olisur, José Manuel Reyes, the devel­op­ment man­ager at Agrícola Pobeña, which pro­duces Alonso Olive Oil, has out­lined the addi­tional logis­ti­cal fac­tors for the dis­tri­b­u­tion of olive oil dur­ing the pan­demic that need to be taken into account.

“There are short­ages of spaces in the dif­fer­ent ships, con­ges­tion in ports and long tran­sits on the routes, which has made it very dif­fi­cult to meet 100 per­cent of the dates pro­grammed, espe­cially for those of us who sell fresh and green oil,” Manuel Reyes told Olive Oil Times.

To off­set some of the eco­nomic impacts of the pan­demic on the olive oil sup­ply chains, many Chilean pro­duc­ers are opt­ing to cer­tify their prod­ucts with the AOS Seal. The stamp ensures that part­ner com­pa­nies meet spe­cific sus­tain­able man­age­ment require­ments in pro­duc­ing or mar­ket­ing their olive oils.

The seal is obtained by mem­ber com­pa­nies that com­ply with the Chilean government’s Clean Production Agreement, which sets out nine main goals related to improv­ing sus­tain­abil­ity, con­serv­ing water, pro­mot­ing bio­di­ver­sity and decreas­ing car­bon emis­sions.

Chilean olive oil pro­duc­ers are also work­ing on a national sus­tain­abil­ity cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, which grants a Sustainable Olive Oil-AOS Seal to those com­pa­nies that meet the goals of the Clean Production Agreement.

The goal of the sus­tain­abil­ity cer­ti­fi­ca­tions is to help set Chilean extra vir­gin olive oils apart in a crowded inter­na­tional mar­ket.