Cobram Estate Olives is Australia’s largest produer and marketer of Australian grown extra virgin olive oil. Our vertically integrated olive model extends the full length of the supply chain, from nursery through to the retail sale of branded consumer goods.
Our Australian olive growing operations are located at Boundary Bend (between Mildura and Swan Hill), Boort (near Bendigo) and Wemen (between Mildura and Swan Hill) with a combined total of over 2.4 million olive trees planted on 6,584 hectares of Victorian farmland. Our groves have been progressively planted, with the first trees planted in 1999 and the most recent planting occurring in 2021.
Our Australian olive groves contain over 11 olive varieties. Much like wine grapes, olive varieties each have their own inherent flavour characteristics and are used to create and enhance different products including the Cobram Estate® supermarket range of olive oils – light, classic and robust. Additionally, the varieties are planted to maximise pollination and as each variety ripens at a different time it allows us to phase the annual harvest over several months.
The Australian olive harvest is in April-June each year. To execute the harvest, we own 26 olive harvesters, including 23 purpose-built Colossus® mechanical over-the-row harvesters and two Optimus® II mechanical over-the-row harvesters developed in conjunction with Maqtec Argentina. Our olives are cold pressed at two state-of-the-art olive oil mills located on-site at our Boundary Bend and Boort groves.
We also own a nine-hectare industrial facility at Lara near Geelong which serves as our head office and includes nursery operations, bottling operations, laboratory services, nine million litres of olive oil storage and warehouses covering approximately 20,000m². This includes Australia’s largest olive oil filling and packaging operation, capable of producing up to 14,400 bottles per hour, the Modern Olives® olive tree nursery (a large scale, specialist olive nursery supplying olive trees to commercial growers, wholesalers, retail nurseries and national chain stores), and the Modern Olives® laboratory, one of the world’s leading olive R&D and testing laboratories. Modern Olives® laboratory has twice been recognised by AOCS as the world’s most accurate, and is accredited by AOCS, NATA/ISO and TGA.
* Australian Operations
