President’s Report to the Victorian Olive Council AGM, 11 December 2007

Victoria is home to both large olive agribusiness and small boutique producers. In past years, the Victorian Olive Council has tried to serve this diverse membership but, with the restructuring the Australian olive industry, VOC Councilors have divided their time this year between the continuing work for the Australian industry under the IPP/DAFF funding and in trying to establish ways to better serve what will be its continuing constituency in Victoria, while managing the expected workload of Victorian affairs. It has been a very busy year for all the volunteers involved.

The Australia-wide project is nearing completion after three years and, by June 2008, we expect the VOC will formally be a branch of the AOA, with a large amount of the burden of administration and financial management transferred to the AOA secretariat. An additional benefit will be the establishment of a Victorian data base of growers, needed for biosecurity to complete the IPP project, but with the potential for better communication as well.

Our first priority was to enlarge the Council to take on the additional workload. This was done with the formation of the VOC Advisory Council in May 2007 which accommodated a number of volunteers who joined the VOC at this time. The second task was to take the burden of travel, and therefore the loss of time, out of Council meetings, and shift the cost from the volunteers back to the Council and thus all Victorian members, by instigating phone meetings. While nothing can be more effective than a face to face meeting, with members separated by hundreds of kilometers, meeting from the comfort of our own homes has distinct advantages and attendance at phone meetings has been far superior to the earlier meetings held mostly in central Melbourne.

We were then able to enlarge the executive and the committee structure with sub-committees formed:

John Power has chaired the marketing, promotion/ /website conglomerate with great skill and moved and maintained the VOC website under the AOA website with great benefits;

Rob Catherall took on Communications, but since his resignation, that work has come under John Power;

Sil Garoni took on the large task as secretary after Andrew Burgess asked to step down mid-year;

Paul Challis has continued as treasurer.

Roger Redston has looked after education & training;

James Macaulay has taken on the running of the Victorian Sensory Panel;

Sil Garoni, Rod Hoare & myself have looked at the VOC constitution and the structure of the VOC with a view to negotiations towards branch status with the AOA;

The R & D committee was disbanded as we had no funds, but Andrew Burgess agreed to form and chair a working group on a needs-be basis.

Additionally, many Victorians also worked as part of the AOA team: Paul Miller as president, Paul Challis, Rob McGovern and Paul Miller as Directors for the LEG and myself as the Victorian Director, Rod Hoare was nominated as the Victorian alternate director, Paul Miller and Paul Challis are central to the Steering Committee of the final round of the DAFF/IPP project, Leandro Ravetti and Paul Miller are joined by Dale Stefox on the R&D committee replacing Peter Caird who served us well in the past, Rod Hoare and myself sit on the Education & Training committee and I sit on the TOP committee and will again be involved with the Expo Seminar program in 2008. Victorians are contributing significantly at a national level.

Roger Redston organised a weekend training venue to commence the formation of a Victorian sensory panel under the official AOA-Wagga Wagga Panel. There have been two great offshoots from this. James Macaulay and I negotiated to use the considerable facilities of the NMIT wine campus at Epping as a base for this panel, facilities which include a 28 booth organoleptic room. Sensory teaching staff from NMIT have also voiced interest in joining the Victorian panel. Additionally, to meet the demand from Victorian growers for further training, NMIT will commence a Certificate course in sensory skills, fitting within the national training guidelines and thus with recurrent government funding and the potential to qualify for FarmBis if the new national government keeps that program. This builds on the basic olive production course already run from NMIT by Hans Hoffman which accepts students Australia-wide by correspondence. There will be further scope for additional training for those interested in becoming blenders. More details of this course will be available shortly.

The Olive Producers (North East Victoria ) Inc Golden Olive Awards continue, and this year the Best in Show was awarded to Barfold Olives, a vertically integrated boutique grove and press owned and operated by the Brajevic family at Barfold just out of Kyneton. Victorian growers and producers were also well represented at the National Olive Awards in Canberra recently. In March 2008 the Bendigo Goldfields Oil and Olive Competition will be staged as part of the Bendigo Olive Fiesta. Additionally, I have met with the Royal Agricultural Society of Victoria and they are planning to stage the first Victorian Awards, including both table olives and extra virgin olive oil, as part of the September 2008 RASV Show.

The ‘Constitution’ subcommittee has worked on the preparation of a model for the Victorian branch of the AOA under the new national structure. With a significant number of growers not attached in any way to either the LEG or regional associations, the VOC Advisory Committee accepted a suggestion that the VOC form a Direct Members Group (DMG), hoping to capture growers who have joined the AOA directly and who, in the new structure, would not have a vote in determining the Victorian Director of the AOA unless they are represented on the VOC. It is also hoped that this new group will facilitate in the dissemination of necessary industry information on a state level. The DMG will have representation on the VOC in the same proportion as the representation from the regional associations.

2007 has seen a continuation of the severe drought in Victoria and the availability of irrigation water has been limited both by volume and price. Many groves are under reduced water regimes and the harvest in 2007 was less than anticipated as a result of this coupled with severe frosts which affected many parts of the state during flowering and fruit set. In spite of this, the olive industry in Victoria continues to grow, producing roughly half of the Australian crop of extra virgin olive oil. Boundary Bend, with over two million trees under their management in Victoria, was named the Australian Agribusiness Exporter of the Year 2007 recently in Brisbane having won the Governor of Victoria’s Agribusiness Exporter of the Year and being named as the Monash University Exporter of the Year at the NAB Agribusiness Awards for Excellence. Redisland Australia, the major supermarket brand, moved their operations from Western Australia to Victoria in September 2007. Victoria now produces over 50% of the national crop of extra virgin olive oil.

The VOC continues to have an excellent relationship with Regional Development Victoria, and we are grateful to Emma Greenhatch for her initiative in using Victorian Extra Virgin Olive Oil instead of wine as the speaker presentations at the Future Foods Conference held in Melbourne in July 2007, and for the promotion this gave to the state industry. I thank all growers who donated the bottled oil. We hope to work closely with RDV during 2008 as we roll out the national consumer awareness campaign, the code of practice that underpins it, and the necessary training opportunities for growers to sign up to the Code, across Victoria.

The VOC held one country meeting in Benalla in April and I have attended a meeting of GSOGA, regular meetings of the Macedon Ranges OA to which I belong, the AGMs of Mornington Peninsular and CVOGA, and the presentation dinner for the Golden Olive Awards held by the North East region in Wangaratta.

Rob Catherall was elected president of the VOC at the AGM in November 2007 but stepped down in December due to work commitments and resigned from the VOC mid-year when business took him into other areas. I thank him for his work and commitment to the Victorian olive industry over many years, I also thank Andrew Burgess who provided the services of a secretariat for many years until his recent resignation, and Eberhard Kunze who has provided wise counsel as vice-president and who now stands aside due to business commitments.

It has been a privilege to have been the VOC president this year, and to have taken part in the range of activities outlined, but the highlight of the year has been the opportunity to work alongside the many willing volunteers who are the Victorian Olive Council. I take this opportunity to also thank all those who have once again agreed to serve as chairs of committees or on the executive for the next twelve months.

The following is a list of all those who have served on the VOC this year.

Representatives from Regional Associations:

John Clifford CVOGA

Trevor Pickles / Dale Stelfox GDOA

Annetta Patterson GOGA Inc

Andrew Laing GSOGA

Rosie Redston MPOA

Eberhard Kunze OP(NE Vic) Inc

Ray Weston WPPOG Inc now MROA

Representatives from the LEG

Paul Challis

Andrew Burgess

Processors

Sil Garoni

Phil Ward

Members of the Executive:

President: Rob Catherall resigned Dec 06; Gwynedd Hunter-Payne

Vic president: Eberhard Kunze resigned Dec 07; Rod Hoare

Secretary: Andrew Burgess resigned June 07; Sil Garoni

Treasurer: Paul Challis

Chair Education C’tee: Roger Redston (Rod Hoare, Rosie Redston)

Chair Marketing: John Power (Rob Catherall resigned Dec 06, Eberhard Kunze, Rosie Redston, Jenny Bellew, Viviene Paramore)

Chair Sensory Panel: James Macaulay (Anne Finlay, Susie Moscovitch)

Constitution/Branch C’tee: Rod Hoare, Sil Garoni, Gwynedd Hunter-Payne

Chair R & D: Andrew Burgess

Members of the VOC Advisory Committee:

Sue Hutchens

Viviene Paramore

Jenny Bellew

Gwynedd Hunter-Payne

VOC President

11 December 2007