Cobram Estate: Inside an Aussie olive oil success story

An almost 30-year journey has seen Cobram Estate evolve into Australia’s leading producer of extra virgin olive oil. See their story.

It’s been almost 30 years since Rob McGavin co-founded Cobram — now Australia’s leading extra-virgin olive producer with 2.6 million trees planted across 7000 hectares of farmland. CONOR FOWLER sits down with him to discuss a range of issues from the company’s US investment to the impact of the Spanish drought and more.

Q: With olives running on a biennial cycle, 2025 will be an on-year in Australia for Cobram. What are your expectations?

A: We’re coming into what should be a really good crop. Demand is still strong which is absolutely brilliant, but we’re still on reasonably limited supply, so we’ve got another tight year ahead. We’ll be really pleased to get to this harvest, where we should get quite a bit more olive oil. We’ve had three harvests in a row that were lower than what we should have got. That’s really been brought about because of La Nina, and wet summers don’t mix with high quality olive oil production.

Q: You’ve had a big focus on US investment, driving consistent growth over the past few years. What is behind this?

A: We’ve invested a lot of money in the US and there’s a lot of opportunities there. What we’ve learnt here over 20 years in pioneering the industry – which has been awfully difficult to be honest, from growing and milling and marketing and developing a brand – we felt that it would be a wasted opportunity not to leverage that knowledge into the US, because no one is really doing that in there at the moment.

Q: Since you’ve entered the US, have you seen competitors try and do what you do?

A: There were some California growers doing a reasonable job. But it’s more around the varieties that we grow, the harvesting methodology, our processing efficiency, our return to the grower, they are probably our key advantages. And then everything that worked in Australia with regards to marketing worked in the US. It’s early days, but the signs are really good.

Rob McGavin chief executive and executive chairman of Cobram Estate. Picture: Yuri Kouzmin.

Q: What has allowed Cobram its point of difference and led to its success?

A: It’s not just one thing, it’s hundreds of things you need to do really well. We have never diverted from just being solely focused on olive oil. In the end it’s about getting more fruit per square metre, of a larger size, with greater oil accumulation. We get around 20 per cent more oil out of the same fruit than the next best in the world, and crush every olive within six hours to lock in the quality.

Q: Spain has suffered from a shocking drought in the past couple of years, how has that impacted demand for your product?

A: The prices went about 50 per cent higher than they’d ever been in Spain because it was such a bad crop. There’s been a lot of under-investment in olives particularly in Europe, as prices have been pretty low for a long period of time. There was a serious supply shortage which caught most global buyers unawares. (As a result) demand was extremely high for our product, and we had to ration with retailers to ensure we didn’t run out.

Q: When starting out the business in 1998, was it always the goal to be this big, this successful?

A: No. Obviously we didn’t want to fail, but we thought we’d plant a reasonable amount of olives with friends and family helping fund it so that we could try and have a high-quality, low-cost product. We never dreamt it would turn into this sort of business.

Q: What are you most proud of?

A: Having Australia leading the world in how to produce high quality EVOO at a lower cost of production. Cobram drives that, it absolutely drives that. To have an equivalent of a medal-winning quality EVOO at retail, competitively priced against imports that are inferior and never win anything, makes us immensely proud. And our steadfast culture of integrity, honesty and consumer first at any cost. If you don’t have the quality, don’t sell the product.