Winning at NYIOOC Part of Producer’s Quest to Improve Reputation of Tunisian EVOO

For the sixth year run­ning, Tunisian pro­ducer Olivko has been rec­og­nized for its organic extra vir­gin olive oils at the NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

Olivko scooped up five awards at this year’s edi­tion of the indus­try’s pre­mier qual­ity con­test, includ­ing three Gold and two Silver Awards.

The com­pany earned the Gold Awards for its robust Chetoui, medium Chemlali and medium Wild Cultivar. Olivko also earned Silver Awards for a del­i­cate and medium Chetoui mono­va­ri­etals.

Karim Fitouri, the founder and owner of Olivko, told Olive Oil Times that the promi­nent emer­gence of Olivko onto the inter­na­tional stage mir­rors the rise of the Tunisian olive oil sec­tor as a whole.

In 2011, Fitouri was liv­ing in England when he real­ized that even though he was finan­cially com­fort­able, he was not happy.

“You just flow with life, that’s it, just fol­low the route of life with­out mak­ing any changes; it was just the same,” he said.

Fitouri said the need for change in his life coin­cided with the Jasmine Revolution in his native Tunisia.

After the 28-day pop­u­lar upris­ing, he observed a grow­ing mar­ket for fur­ni­ture in his home coun­try due to the con­se­quent con­struc­tion boom, which led to his deci­sion to import fur­ni­ture from China.

Ruminating on the way back to the air­port after vis­it­ing a friend in China to source fur­ni­ture, he con­cluded that it also would be a viable option to export food to China. This way, he could sup­port his country’s econ­omy and help the Tunisian peo­ple.

Fitouri con­sid­ered a few Tunisian food prod­ucts, includ­ing toma­toes and dates, but ulti­mately decided on olive oil.

“At the time, I knew noth­ing about olive oil, although I was born in a coun­try that is the sec­ond-largest pro­ducer after the European Union,” he said.

Through a friend in China, Fitouri arranged a meet­ing with a buyer who, together with his daugh­ter, owned 17 super­mar­kets. Fitouri col­lected a large quan­tity of olive oil duty-free from a Tunisian mill and sent the oil to China via England.

The buyer was under the impres­sion that Fitouri was English and ​“liked the price and the oil,” he remem­bered.

“I thought, ​‘Wow, this is easy, this is great,’ ” Fitouri said with a laugh. But then the rug got pulled out from under his feet.

“All of a sud­den, he asked me: ​‘Where is this oil from?’ Once I said the oil was from Tunisia, every­thing stopped,” Fitouri said.

It turned out the buyer had had a pre­vi­ous neg­a­tive expe­ri­ence with Tunisian olive oil and pre­ferred to import from Australia instead.

Fitouri said on the 13-hour flight back to England, he was ​“in agony” think­ing about how the rep­u­ta­tion of Tunisian olive oil had soured the deal he came so close to secur­ing. He then found him­self faced with two choices.

“Do I go back to England and call it a day, or do I go ahead and make a good name for Tunisia for me to sell my prod­uct and for other pro­duc­ers to sell their prod­uct?” he explained.

Fitouri opted for the sec­ond option and started study­ing the short­com­ings of Tunisian olive oil pro­duc­tion, a process that took him four years.

He found that Tunisia’s cli­mate was opti­mal for olive cul­ti­va­tion, and it had unique cul­ti­vars, so the North African coun­try had con­sid­er­able poten­tial as a pro­ducer.

Ultimately, he con­cluded that the main rea­son for Tunisian olive oil’s neg­a­tive rep­u­ta­tion inter­na­tion­ally was that 90 per­cent was exported unla­beled in bulk.

Fitouri said it was the gov­ern­men­t’s respon­si­bil­ity to improve the rep­u­ta­tion of a par­tic­u­lar country’s prod­ucts, real­iz­ing it would be a mam­moth task for an indi­vid­ual with lim­ited finan­cial resources — ​“almost impos­si­ble,” he mused.

“But I’m a man that doesn’t give up,” Fitouri added. He decided that a cost-effec­tive way for him as an indi­vid­ual to improve his country’s out­look was to pro­duce high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil and to enter com­pe­ti­tions.

He said that, based on his research, he knew the NYIOOC was the most well-rec­og­nized and trusted olive oil qual­ity com­pe­ti­tion glob­ally. He con­cluded that win­ning awards at the NYIOOC would improve Tunisia’s rep­u­ta­tion as a world-class pro­ducer.

Fitouri said that Olivko sourced olives from across Tunisia to pro­duce its extra vir­gin olive oil. He recalled the com­pa­ny’s first oil was pressed on December 21, 2016, and first entered the NYIOOC in April 2017.

That year, Olivko won a Gold Award – Tunisia’s first Gold Award at the com­pe­ti­tion – which was a con­fir­ma­tion for Fitouri that Tunisia was capa­ble of pro­duc­ing high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil.

Fitouri said he real­ized one pro­ducer could not make a dif­fer­ence on their own, so he approached oth­ers and explained that they had to work together. In 2018, he assisted some pro­duc­ers by pay­ing their entry fees.

That year, pro­duc­ers won 11 awards at the NYIOOC and have pro­gres­sively earned more each year, arriv­ing at 32 in 2022.

Along with total awards, the num­ber of Gold Awards has steadily increased each year, and the suc­cess rate of Tunisian pro­duc­ers at the com­pe­ti­tion has also trended upwards.

Fitouri said one of the high­lights was when Olivko won the Best in Class (since dis­con­tin­ued) at the 2019 NYIOOC for its Chemlali. This local cul­ti­var con­tributed to around 60 per­cent of Tunisian olive oil pro­duc­tion and, up to that stage, was sold in bulk in anonymity.

“So that proved that the idea worked to make a name for Tunisian olive oil,” Fitouri said.

In addi­tion to his four-year study on Tunisian olive oil, Fitouri decided to start tak­ing courses through the Olive Oil Times Education Lab, which he said was a turn­ing point for him.

“If it weren’t for that course, I don’t think any of this would have hap­pened,” Fitouri said. ​“I learned a lot, and I met many inter­est­ing peo­ple. It has also changed the way I look at olive oils. Everything changed from that point. ”

Fitouri said Olivko sources olives from across Tunisia to pro­duce their organic extra vir­gin olive oils, which have won more than 100 awards over the years and are sold in the Middle East, India, Europe, Canada and the United States, among oth­ers.

The com­pany sup­plies extra vir­gin olive oil for pack­ing canned tuna and cre­ated Olivko Kids, an extra vir­gin olive oil for chil­dren.

Fitouri believes Tunisia could be on par with Italy, in terms of pro­duc­tion, in the next decade and hopes he can con­tinue play­ing his part in sup­port­ing the sec­tor.

“I want to leave some­thing behind. I want to make some dif­fer­ence,” he con­cluded. ​“I am happy because even if I die now, you can­not fake his­tory. It is there.”