Australians love olive oil, and right now, whether it is imported or home-grown, it is expensive. Landlines Halina Baczkowski takes a look at why, and how Australian olive oil compares with that from overseas.
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00:00Australians are facing a double blow when it comes to olive oil, availability and price.
00:10Firstly, a heatwave and drought in Europe, a major source of olive oil, has limited supplies.
00:17And secondly, the Australian season hasn't been great, so prices have skyrocketed.
00:24Five years ago, you could buy a 750ml bottle of extra virgin olive oil for around $10.
00:32Lately, it could cost anywhere up to $25.
00:36Spain produces half the world's olive oil, so they've had a big supply issue.
00:41And thirdly, in Australia, because we've had wet summers, olives absolutely love a dry summer.
00:46The wet summers have been bad for us, so we've had a couple of bad seasons, including this
00:50season here, which is an off-season anyway, because olives have an on-year and an off-year.
00:55But it's been tough, so there's a shortage of supply, and if you have a sit-by yourself,
01:00you'll see lots of empty shelves.
01:03But our love affair with the golden liquid hasn't faltered.
01:11Leandro Rossetti is the CEO of Cobramus State, and he reckons consumption of olive oil in
01:17Australia has more than doubled.
01:20It's largely on the back of domestic production, that now supplies approximately 50% of the consumption.
01:26Another interesting fact about Australian consumption, it has the largest consumption
01:31of olive oil per capita outside the Mediterranean.
01:35So if you move away from the traditional countries like Spain, Italy, Greece, well, Australia
01:39is the largest consumer per capita, with a bit over 2 litres per capita.
01:43But still a long way to go before you reach the 8 to 10 and plus litres per capita per
01:49year that they have in Spain, Italy or Greece.
01:52And if we follow the medical advice of having two, three tablespoons a day, that actually
01:57translates into about 8 litres per capita.
02:01Cobramus State is Australia's largest producer of extra virgin olive oil.
02:05According to the company, it makes up 70% of all extra virgin olive oil grown and produced
02:12in the local market, with their products easy to find on the big three supermarket shelves.
02:17The company recently opened a new integrated site in the northwest Victorian town of Bort.
02:23Chair and co-founder Rob McGavin says their investment is a big one.
02:28Yeah, it's huge.
02:29We've got two and a half million trees.
02:31It costs around $40 million per year in operating costs to run our groves.
02:35And we've just done a $35 million expansion of our groves.
02:38There's something like $700 million we've invested in developing this Australian industry.
02:47So, yeah, it's huge.
02:48It's huge.
02:49It's huge.
02:50It's huge.