Cobram Estate Olives Limited (“Cobram Estate Olives” or “CBO” or “the Company”), formerly known as Boundary Bend Limited, was founded by Paul Riordan and Rob McGavin in 1998. Over more than 20 years the Company has grown to become the market leader in the Australian olive industry and a global leader in sustainable olive farming with operations in Australia and the USA and a portfolio of premium brands. Today, CBO’s extra virgin olive oils are recognised for their world class quality, receiving 475 awards since 2003 including one of our Cobram Estate® products from California being named one of the world’s healthiest extra virgin olive oils in 2017 and 2022.
CBO operates a fully integrated business model which is unsurpassed in the Australian olive industry. Today, CBO is Australia’s largest olive farmer with over 2.4 million olive trees planted on 6,584 hectares of freehold farmland and produced an estimated 72% of Australia’s total olive crop in 2022. In the USA, the Company’s owns 207,500 olive trees planted on 358 hectares of owned and leased land in the California. In total, the Company owns 18,677 hectares of freehold farmland, of which 16,700 hectares is located in central and northwest Victoria and southwest New South Wales. The Company also owns three olive mills (two in Australia and one in the USA) with over 144 tonnes per hour of combined olive milling capacity, enabling the Company to control the milling of every olive it grows.
The Company’s large-scale olive groves and olive mills are some of the largest in the world, enabling the Company to achieve efficiencies in olive growing, processing, and marketing. CBO’s proprietary growing system, Oliv.iQ®, allows it to grow more olives per tree, accumulate more oil in those olives, and extract more olive oil out of the olives at a higher quality and lower cost of production than the next best growers in the world, as highlighted in a recent study by U.C. Davis, California USA (2019). All the while using less water, less fertiliser, and sequestering more carbon per litre of olive oil produced than global averages.
To complete its integrated operations, CBO also owns Australia’s largest olive tree nursery, two bottling and storage facilities, 18.4 million litres of olive oil storage capacity, and one of the world’s leading olive research, development, and testing laboratories – Modern Olives® – with labs in Australia and the USA.
CBO’s focuses on the sale of premium quality extra virgin olive oil products, primarily in proprietary brands, to optimise the selling price per litre for its olive oil crop and minimise agricultural commodity risk. The Company owns two of Australia’s leading olive oil brands, Cobram Estate® and Red Island®, which had a combined market share of 49% of extra virgin olive oil supermarket sales by value in Australia in FY2022, yet only 23% of total cooking oil sales by value allowing room for growth. In taking a ‘tree-to-table’ approach to olive growing and marketing, CBO manages all aspects of the olive life cycle and ensures that every bottle or tin of extra virgin olive oil produced meets its high standards.
Since its founding and to this day, CBO has benefited from changes to Australian consumer trends including a growing interest in sourcing Australian grown and owned products and an increasing understanding of the health benefits of extra virgin olive oil (extra virgin olive oil is the only mainstream cooking oil that is purely the juice of fresh fruit and is cold pressed without the use of high heat, chemicals, or solvents). The Company recognised the same consumer trends that have propelled it to success in Australia are continuing to develop in the USA, and since establishing operations in the USA in 2014 has experienced strong demand for Californian extra virgin olive oil marketed under its Cobram Estate® brand and private label offerings.
With an unwavering focus on superior quality, innovation, and customer satisfaction through all facets of its business, CBO has developed a reputation as a leading player in the modern olive industry. The Company is well positioned for future growth that will be predominantly driven by its maturing Australian groves delivering additional extra virgin olive oil to support branded sales growth, and its rapidly growing vertically integrated Californian business.
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