Winning Producers at World Competition Give Moroccan EVOO the 'Place It Deserves'

With three awards at this year’s NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, Moroccan pro­duc­ers enjoyed their best per­for­mance to date at the world’s most pres­ti­gious olive oil qual­ity con­test.

Producers from the North African coun­try earned one award in 2019 and none in 2018. This year’s results have con­firmed the country’s bet on pro­duc­ing high-qual­ity olive oils is begin­ning to pay off.

“We were very proud and happy. This indi­cates that we are going in the right direc­tion,” said Omar Tagnaouti, the exports and devel­op­ment man­ager at Olea, a farm­ing group with thou­sands of acres of fields in the North African coun­try.

Its Zouitina brand won a Gold Award at the 2020 NYIOOC and a Silver in 2019.

“We offer qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil and enough vol­ume to be com­pet­i­tive in the inter­na­tional mar­ket, but we never neglect arti­san pro­duc­tion,” he told Olive Oil Times. “[The NYIOOC] helps us to mar­ket our brand, Zouitina.”

Les Huiles Precieuses is a small pro­ducer whose Huile Bleue earned a Silver Award at the NYIOOC for its Picholine mono­va­ri­etal from the Atlas Mountains, not far from Marrakech.

“We are really happy and a bit sur­prised,” Djamel Belhaouci, the company’s man­ager, told Olive Oil Times. ​“We are a young com­pany and this is a really good thing for mar­ket­ing.”

Belhaouci gives all the credit of the qual­ity of his oil to Franck Salvatori, his part­ner and an olive oil expert who embarked on this project three years ago.

“He is very expe­ri­enced. He came to Morocco and found that this region is per­fect to pro­duce olive oil,” he said. ​“Our project started like that. Another friend, Jacques-Antoine Preziosi, who is a lawyer in Marrakech, also joined in. Now we are in the sec­ond year and we are very excited and sur­prised by this suc­cess.”

“For us, it is very impor­tant to inter­act and com­pete with the best oils in the world,” Belhaouci added. ​“We can do that only once in a while and it is pos­si­ble at the NYIOOC. We believe that’s the place where you must be.”

Eythrib Abderrahman is the man­ager of Harrando and Co, another small pro­ducer in the region of Frouga, also close to the city of Marrakech. His Picholine Languedoc mono­va­ri­etal won a Silver Award at the NYIOOC.

“We are begin­ners and an award in such a pres­ti­gious com­pe­ti­tion gives us sup­port and con­fi­dence to keep going,” Abderrahman told Olive Oil Times. ​“In 2019, we sent our oil to the Salon de Paris com­pe­ti­tion and we did not get any award. After that, we rethought the way we were doing cer­tain things and tried to improve them.”

“We looked for a qual­ity mill and reduced the time from har­vest­ing to press­ing the olives. This award tells us we did it right,” he added.

Harrando and Co planted its first olive trees in 2012 in a 15-hectare (37-acre) estate, focus­ing on just one vari­ety: Picholine Languedoc.

“I didn’t study agron­omy, but I had the per­sonal will to change my life and to be in touch with the coun­try­side,” Abderrahman said. ​“I met Rachid Harrando and we decided to start this project. We began lit­tle by lit­tle with a lot of will and per­sonal pas­sion.”

“Each olive oil has its own fea­tures,” he added. ​“It depends on the ter­roir and the ori­gin in which it’s pro­duced. Morocco has to get out so that it is bet­ter known and appre­ci­ated. Step by step, we want to walk that path.”

In 2019, Morocco pro­duced 145,000 tons of olive oil, up from 36,000 tons in 1991, accord­ing to the International Olive Council. The coun­try ranks now as the sixth-largest oil pro­ducer in the world.

And this steady growth in terms of quan­tity has been fol­lowed by an improve­ment in the qual­ity of Moroccan oil, accord­ing to the pro­duc­ers con­tacted by Olive Oil Times.

“Certain pro­duc­ers and investors, mostly from out of the tra­di­tional farm­ers’ world, were con­scious of the need to improve qual­ity in order to be com­pet­i­tive and put Moroccan oil in the place it deserves,” Abderrahman said. ​“You need to do some­thing spe­cific to achieve that.”

Being a Mediterranean coun­try, olive oil has been a sta­ple food in Morocco for cen­turies. Now, this tra­di­tional sec­tor is going through a quiet rev­o­lu­tion.

“Morocco has had qual­ity olive oil for a long time,” Belhaouci said. ​“The prob­lem is that tra­di­tional peo­ple, if we may put it that way, have an opin­ion about what is high-qual­ity oil which is dif­fer­ent from that of the experts. I guess that is one of the main rea­sons why it took so long for Moroccan oil to be inter­na­tion­ally rec­og­nized.”

“I think this is just the begin­ning of a lit­tle rev­o­lu­tion in olive oil,” he added. ​“Not only in Morocco but also in places such as Slovenia and Uruguay. In 20 years’ time, we will be able to find very good olive oil in many coun­tries in the world and Morocco will be part of that change.”