Pakistan Bets Big on Local Olive Oil Production

Under the aus­pices of a new orga­ni­za­tion, Pakistani olive oil pro­duc­ers are prepar­ing to enter the global mar­ket.

Hundreds of thou­sands of trees have been planted in the last 10 years and most are now grow­ing in regions which experts con­sider to be well-suited for olive cul­ti­va­tion.

With the help of sev­eral coun­tries and olive pro­duc­ers, Pakistan is boost­ing its efforts to reduce depen­dency on for­eign edi­ble oils and become a new player in the olive oil world.

The newly-coined brand, Pak Olive, is the name and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion cho­sen by the gov­ern­ment to label the high-qual­ity olive oil com­ing from the pub­lic sec­tor.

A lab and a mobile unit for clin­i­cal and sen­sory test­ing of olive oil qual­ity is being set up for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion under the project.

“The pri­vate sec­tor will be encour­aged and trained regard­ing reg­is­tra­tion and patent­ing of their brand with cer­ti­fi­ca­tion cover,” Muhammad Tariq, the project’s direc­tor at the Ministry of National Food Security and Research, told Olive Oil Times.

The estab­lish­ment of a Pakistani olive oil coun­cil is also planned.

While cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is seen as a deci­sive step to bring Pakistani olive oils to the atten­tion of inter­na­tional buy­ers, annu­ally-increas­ing pro­duc­tion is also help­ing to meet the coun­try’s domes­tic demand.

“With the 2019/20 sea­son, the esti­mated olive oil pro­duc­tion capac­ity in Pakistan will reach approx­i­mately 1,400 tons,” Tariq said. ​“By the year 2027, pro­duc­tion is expected to reach 16,000 tons. Subsequent tar­gets for olive plants will also be con­tin­ued in the com­ing years.”

Pakistan began pro­duc­ing olive oil back in 2010, ben­e­fit­ing from strong agri­cul­tural coop­er­a­tion efforts with Italy and Spain as well as com­mer­cial coop­er­a­tion with China.

Thousands of trees were imported into the coun­try, together with experts who helped to iden­tify the most promis­ing areas for olive cul­ti­va­tion. Around 10 mil­lion acres have already been iden­ti­fied for grow­ing olives; areas in which the crop will not com­pete with other fruit trees, cereal or oilseed crops.

“The indige­nous pro­duc­tion of olive nurs­ery plants is very lim­ited,” Tariq said. ​“That is why the fed­eral gov­ern­ment is import­ing cer­ti­fied olive nurs­ery plants of dif­fer­ent vari­eties from var­i­ous coun­tries, both for oil and table olive pro­duc­tion.”

“Technical assis­tance to the farm­ers for this new crop in terms of orchard man­age­ment, pro­cess­ing and nurs­ery pro­duc­tion is lack­ing at present, but it is pro­vided for under the project,” he added.

To be com­pet­i­tive in the inter­na­tional mar­ket, the project will also train work­ers on how to use mod­ern extrac­tion tech­niques in the mills.

Interest from farm­ers in grow­ing olives and pro­duc­ing oil is also grow­ing rapidly. This has partly been fos­tered by the spe­cial char­ac­ter­is­tics of the olive trees, which can sur­vive in dry and arid con­di­tions that are gen­er­ally inhos­pitable for other crops.

“Pakistani grow­ers are very keen to grow olive plan­ta­tions because they have very poor pro­duc­tion from other crops or have lands that are not cul­ti­vated but where olive trees could thrive,” Tariq said.

In addi­tion to being drought tol­er­ant, olive trees also require rel­a­tively low lev­els of invest­ment, com­pared to other crops, while still yield­ing a return, which has also increased inter­est in Pakistan.

Furthermore, the gov­ern­ment is actively work­ing with the farm­ers to get the groves going.

“As the olive plan­ta­tion is being estab­lished on mar­ginal or degraded lands with poor farm­ers, con­se­quently they do not have ade­quate resources for ini­tial invest­ments, such as irri­ga­tion facil­i­ties, watch and ward,” Tariq said. ​“Therefore, the fed­eral gov­ern­ment is pro­vid­ing olive nurs­ery plants free of cost and drip irri­ga­tion sys­tems, as water-sav­ing tech­nol­ogy in this sec­tor.”

“The Ministry of Climate Change is also plan­ning to aug­ment the present efforts, in terms of plant­ing, under the Billion Tree Tsunami Project,” he added. ​“Moreover, a strong col­lab­o­ra­tion in the olive sec­tor with the Italian gov­ern­ment sup­port is also under­way.”

Once new groves have been estab­lished and olive oil is being pressed annu­ally in the mod­ern mills, the next step for Pak Olive will be to gar­ner inter­na­tional inter­est for Pakistani extra vir­gin olive oil.