Turkish Producers Champion Native Varieties at World Competition

Summary

Turkish olive oil pro­duc­ers won a total of 30 awards at the 2025 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, with Goldere Gida and Green Amour among the win­ners. Despite chal­lenges such as low prices and high pro­duc­tion costs, the coun­try’s olive oil sec­tor remains strong, with pro­duc­ers like Zagoda Olive Oil and Bata Tarim ve Gida Urunleri con­sis­tently earn­ing recog­ni­tion at the com­pe­ti­tion.

Amid a record har­vest and emerg­ing chal­lenges through­out the har­vest sea­son, olive oil pro­duc­ers, bot­tlers and exporters from Turkey com­bined to win 30 awards (25 Gold and five Silver Awards) from 58 entries at the 2025 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

The enthu­si­asm for the record olive oil crop of 475,000 met­ric tons has been toned down by the uncer­tainty that looms over the country’s olive oil sec­tor due to low pro­ducer prices, high pro­duc­tion costs and irres­olute gov­ern­ment poli­cies such as the sud­den impo­si­tion and lift­ing of export bans of bulk olive oil from Turkey.

The impact of the drought that affected the Eastern Mediterranean last autumn was more notice­able in some of the country’s regions, such as Bursa and Balikesir, two tra­di­tional Turkish olive-grow­ing areas. 

Nevertheless, pro­duc­ers in most of Turkey’s olive oil-pro­duc­ing regions enjoyed abun­dant olive oil crops this sea­son.

In the Milas dis­trict in south­west Turkey, local pro­ducer Goldere Gida has suc­ceeded since its incep­tion two years ago.

The promi­nent pro­ducer built on last year’s NYIOOC acco­lade to win two Gold Awards at the 2025 NYIOOC for their Funoli brand from the indige­nous Memecik vari­ety.

“The news that we won the NYIOOC Gold Award for the sec­ond year was an immense moment for us, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing that it was also our sec­ond year as olive oil pro­duc­ers,” co-owner Tolga Erkok told Olive Oil Times.

“Last year, we won a Gold Award with Funoli Goldere, and this year we added our Funoli Organic series as a Gold Award win­ner,” he added.

Erkok noted that the 2024/25 har­vest was bet­ter than the pre­vi­ous one in many ways, despite a very hot sum­mer fol­lowed by a dry autumn up until the har­vest began.

“Our local Memecik vari­ety olive trees stood up well,” he said. ​“I hope we have con­tributed to this by prun­ing to har­vest fewer but health­ier olives.”

“We plan to con­sis­tently pro­duce top-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil with our care­ful milling oper­a­tion and deliver it to olive oil lovers world­wide,” Erkok added.

First-time entrant Green Amour cel­e­brated a Gold Award in New York for a medium-inten­sity extra vir­gin from the Trilye vari­ety.

Green Amour, owned by the Özdoğan fam­ily, grows 23,000 olive trees on the moun­tain slopes around Salihli in the province of Manisa.

“This is the first time we have par­tic­i­pated, and we are so happy to receive the Gold Award,” chief exec­u­tive Yurdakul Özdoğan said.

The NYIOOC acco­lade marked a suc­cess­ful 2024/25 har­vest for Green Amour. With such abun­dant olive oil yields across the coun­try, Turkish pro­duc­ers may strug­gle to com­pen­sate for their labor through­out the long har­vest sea­son.

“The har­vest sea­son was very pro­duc­tive,” Özdoğan said. ​“However, due to the excess prod­uct, prices were very low. We closed the sea­son with a loss, espe­cially because of the high labor costs.”

However, in the fol­low­ing 2025/26 crop year, some ini­tial esti­mates sug­gest that Turkey will expe­ri­ence mod­er­ate olive oil pro­duc­tion of around 250,000 tons.

Özdoğan added that, after win­ning the NYIOOC award, Green Amour plans to export to the United States, antic­i­pat­ing that the tar­iff scheme imple­mented by the Trump admin­is­tra­tion will improve and become ​“very rea­son­able” for Turkey.

Apart from val­i­dat­ing cul­ti­va­tion and pro­duc­tion tech­niques, the NYIOOC acco­lades can also be the key for pro­duc­ers to enter the highly com­pet­i­tive North American mar­ket. 

Three NYIOOC awards brought joy and sat­is­fac­tion to Zagoda Olive Oil, another Manisa-based pro­ducer, after a demand­ing har­vest.

“Winning at the NYIOOC is an incred­i­ble honor, val­i­dat­ing our effort and com­mit­ment to high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil,” owner Ceren Su Sahin said

Su Sahin added that unpre­dictable weather con­di­tions through­out the har­vest sea­son required them to be more pre­cise with their har­vest tim­ing.

“Since we hand­pick our olives and press them the same day to pre­serve the high­est polyphe­nol con­tent, our pro­duc­tion costs increased,” she said. ​“Despite this, main­tain­ing our qual­ity stan­dards remained our top pri­or­ity.”

Zagoda Olive Oil, whose founder was inspired by a poem by world-famous Turkish-Polish poet and nov­el­ist Nâzım Hikmet, exports extra vir­gin olive oil to Michigan in the United States.

The com­pany has also won three awards in the 2022 and 2023 edi­tions of the World Competition. This year, the pro­ducer earned two Gold Awards for the Zagoda Ayvalik and Trilye mono­va­ri­etals and a Silver Award for an Arbequina.

Producers from Turkey’s north­west­ern regions were also rec­og­nized at the 2025 World Competition for their sig­na­ture olive oils.

“The Gold Award at the NYIOOC is the most valu­able reward, the best com­pen­sa­tion for the hard work and com­mit­ment of all of our farm work­ers,” said Mehmet Taki, co-owner of Bata Tarim ve Gida Urunleri, after being awarded for the sixth straight year at the World Competition for the Safitad Early Harvest blend from Ayvalik and Domat olives.

The pro­ducer from the Dardanelles Straits pro­duced 50,000 liters of extra vir­gin olive oil this crop year.

“Compared to the last two sea­sons, I can call this sea­son flaw­less,” Taki said. ​“Everything pro­gressed as expected, includ­ing the drought we got used to in the last cou­ple of years.”

For their part, True Olive also relied on an improved har­vest com­pared to last year to secure two Gold Awards at the 2025 World Competition.

“It was an incred­i­ble expe­ri­ence,” co-founder Nicole Babaoglu said after the results were out.

“Compared to last year’s har­vest, which was heav­ily impacted by the drought, the 2024/25 har­vest was a much bet­ter year.”

This crop year, True Olive pro­duced 7,000 liters of high-qual­ity olive oil from the fam­ily groves close to the Dardanelles Strait. A decade ago, the groves were rav­aged by fire. With proper nur­tur­ing, how­ever, the olive trees regen­er­ated and began bear­ing fruit again.

“We felt deeply hon­ored for the awards,” Babaoglu said. ​“Not just for the recog­ni­tion, but for the oppor­tu­nity to carry on our fam­i­ly’s legacy. It means so much to be able to rep­re­sent every­thing they’ve worked so hard to build.”

Artem Oliva from Izmir on Turkey’s Aegean coast, one of the country’s largest olive oil pro­duc­ers and exporters, proudly received a Silver Award at the 2025 NYIOOC for their Domat extra vir­gin from the epony­mous native olive vari­ety.

“As Artem Oliva, we are hon­ored to be rec­og­nized with a Silver Award at the NYIOOC this year,” man­ag­ing part­ner Can Candeger said.

“This award is par­tic­u­larly mean­ing­ful given the fruit­ful har­vest sea­son in 2024/25,” he added. ​“We have proudly pro­duced Turkish olive oils with excep­tional aroma, bal­ance, and sta­bil­ity.”

Candeger also noted that the awards Turkish pro­duc­ers have won at the World Competition over the years indi­cate the coun­try’s high stand­ing in the global olive oil scene.

“When we look at Turkey’s per­for­mance trend across 2021 to 2025, with suc­cess rates rang­ing from 48 to 69 per­cent, it becomes clear that Turkey has firmly estab­lished itself as a key player in pre­mium olive oil pro­duc­tion and strong brand­ing,” he con­cluded.