Turkish Producer Monsida Eyes Global Markets After Record Harvest

Summary

After years in the food indus­try, Nüvit Kulunyar returned to his fam­i­ly’s roots in agri­cul­ture to start Monsida, a com­pany pro­duc­ing high-qual­ity olive oil in Turkey. Utilizing spe­cific olive vari­eties and unique har­vest­ing tech­niques, Monsida has gained recog­ni­tion in inter­na­tional com­pe­ti­tions, with plans to expand into export mar­kets like the United States, England, Japan, and Germany to mit­i­gate fluc­tu­a­tions in olive oil prices and adapt to chang­ing cli­mate con­di­tions.

After more than 30 years work­ing across the food indus­try, Monsida founder Nüvit Kulunyar decided to return to his family’s roots in agri­cul­ture.

While work­ing for sev­eral major Turkish food com­pa­nies in Istanbul, Kulunyar over­saw the sales and mar­ket­ing of olive oil, sun­flower oil, mar­garine and other food prod­ucts. 

His prox­im­ity to pro­duc­ers and olive oil sell­ers, com­bined with his admi­ra­tion for the product’s health ben­e­fits and sus­tain­abil­ity cre­den­tials, even­tu­ally led him to his family’s his­toric home 170 kilo­me­ters south of Istanbul in Balıkesir province.

“In my pre­vi­ous pro­fes­sional life, I worked with branded olive oil, fre­quently meet­ing with pro­duc­ers and dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­nies to under­stand mar­ket dynam­ics,” he told Olive Oil Times. ​“This, com­bined with my fam­i­ly’s back­ground in agri­cul­ture, was a key fac­tor in my becom­ing an olive oil pro­ducer today.”

Kulunyar started Monsida in 2022, har­vest­ing native Domat, Edremit and Yamalak Sarısı olives from the foothills of the Kaz Mountains, above the Gulf of Edremit. 

Found almost exclu­sively in the town of Yamalak in Aydın, Yamalak Sarısı olives ripen early in the sea­son due to a unique com­bi­na­tion of rain­fall, humid­ity and alti­tude. 

As a result, Kulunyar begins the har­vest in late September to pick the Yamalak Sarısı and slightly more wide­spread Domat olives while they are still green, reap­ing the ben­e­fits of their high polyphe­nol con­tent.

From mid-October to early November, Kulunyar com­pletes the har­vest by pick­ing the Edremit olives as they mature, result­ing in a more del­i­cate extra vir­gin olive oil.

Overall, Kulunyar believes that the region’s spe­cific cli­mate, includ­ing high sum­mer winds, and Edremit’s moun­tain­ous and coastal ter­rain, con­tribute to the unique qual­ity of its extra vir­gin olive oil. 

In March, Monsida’s Domat mono­va­ri­etal was awarded at the world’s largest olive oil qual­ity com­pe­ti­tion. 

“The key char­ac­ter­is­tics of our Monsida Domat olive oil are that it’s a sin­gle-estate prod­uct with a rich, fruity aroma and a bal­anced bit­ter­ness and pun­gency,” Kulunyar said.

“It was truly grat­i­fy­ing to hear about our Gold Award at the NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition,” he added. ​“This is a sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ment, and it’s incred­i­bly reward­ing to see all our hard work acknowl­edged.” 

Entering inter­na­tional qual­ity com­pe­ti­tions, espe­cially the NYIOOC, has played a cru­cial role in Monsida’s prod­uct devel­op­ment, and Kulunyar hopes that it will also help the com­pany expand beyond the domes­tic mar­ket. 

“[The com­pe­ti­tions] rep­re­sent an impor­tant chal­lenge and an oppor­tu­nity to improve our prod­ucts,” he said. ​“We use these acco­lades to com­mu­ni­cate with our cus­tomers, illus­trat­ing what a truly qual­ity prod­uct is and what cri­te­ria it meets.” 

Drawing on his pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence in the food indus­try, Kulunyar makes a point to remain in close con­tact with a wide range of cus­tomers, includ­ing home cooks, pro­fes­sional chefs, and dis­trib­u­tors.

Along with enter­ing olive oil qual­ity com­pe­ti­tions, Kulunyar plans to visit sev­eral inter­na­tional food fairs to raise the pro­file of the three-year-old com­pany.

“Currently, our Monsida sales are focused on the domes­tic mar­ket, but we plan to work on export sales in the near future,” he said. ​“Our poten­tial tar­get mar­kets for export are the United States, England, Japan and Germany.”

Kulunyar takes a long-term view of the olive oil mar­ket and believes Monsida’s busi­ness strat­egy will hedge against the sig­nif­i­cant swings in inter­na­tional olive oil prices.

“Fluctuations in olive oil sales and prof­itabil­ity are a peri­odic occur­rence,” he said. ​“However, we believe these chal­lenges can be mit­i­gated by bal­anc­ing domes­tic sales with a strong export strat­egy.”

Relatively high tar­iffs of 15 per­cent on European Union and 25 per­cent on Tunisian olive oil exports to the U.S. have paved the way for Turkey, which faces a base­line ten per­cent tar­iff, to cap­ture a larger mar­ket share. 

The world’s sec­ond-largest olive oil pro­ducer in the 2024/25 crop year was the fourth-largest exporter to the U.S. in 2023, accord­ing to U.S. gov­ern­ment data.

The award has also capped off a par­tic­u­larly fruit­ful sea­son for Turkey and Monsida. Officials esti­mate that Turkey pro­duced a record-high 475,000 tons of olive oil in the 2024/25 crop year, and Kulunyar con­firmed that Monsida enjoyed sim­i­lar for­tunes with 5,000 liters of pro­duc­tion.

“At Monsida, we were able to increase our pro­duc­tion sig­nif­i­cantly com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year,” he said. ​“While this growth was very pos­i­tive, the cli­mate change-related drought and reduced rain­fall brought about dif­fer­ent chal­lenges in olive oil pro­duc­tion.” 

“We faced issues with both qual­ity and yield, and we are actively work­ing to address these prob­lems,” he added.

Kulunyar said he closely mon­i­tors the olive groves, col­lect­ing and tak­ing action based on a range of data. Specifically to cope with the region’s increas­ing droughts, he is installing a new irri­ga­tion sys­tem.

While some experts expect olive farm­ing to play a cru­cial role in the future of agri­cul­ture, Kulunyar believes that farm­ers in his part of Turkey will need to adapt to declin­ing rain­fall.