Mention olive groves and most people will think of Italy, Greece or Spain, but all that could be set to change now that Wales’s first olive grove has been planted in North Wales.
Anglesey-based cooking oil producer Calon Lân has planted 50 olive trees next to a vine yard on the northern coast of the island.
Wales’s first olive grove is set to ignite the imagination of farmers and landowners about the real implications of climate change which could lead to warmer drier summers and milder winters.
Calon Lân - which means ‘pure heart’ - produce camelina, avocado and hemp oils for cooking.
The idea for the project stems from a comment from its director, farmer’s son, Geraint Hughes, 28, who remarked how great it would be to grow Welsh olives.
He teamed up with enterprise agency Menter Môn and local vineyard owner Tom Barlow of Gwinllan Padrig to source trees from an olive producing region in Italy that experiences frost and snow in winter.
The variety should provide the best chance of a successful harvest and a proportion of the trees planted are old enough to produce given the right conditions.
“What we need is virtually no frost in the winter and hot baking days in the summer,” explained Geraint Hughes from Calon Lân Foods. “We might struggle to get a decent crop of olives initially, but it’s a matter of when we’ll get the right conditions rather than if. Calon Lân wants to be the first to sell Welsh grown olives.”
Olives are long-lived with a life expectancy of 500 years. A tree can grow up to 50 feet tall, but a well maintained shrub pruned regularly for commercial harvesting will be kept to about 20 feet high.
“The trees are well adapted for growing in thin rocky soils,” continued Geraint Hughes. “Climate forecasters say Wales will resemble south of France in 20-30 years time, so we may as well start planning ahead.
“No one can condone the causes of climate change, but we must think about future opportunities or we will struggle even more,” he added.
The Llangefni company is a partnership between Geraint Hughes - former manager of the Centre for Alternative Land Use at the University of Wales Bangor, and north Wales enterprise agency, Menter Môn. The venture has received funding from the LEADER + European Community initiative which assists rural communities.
“We’re quietly confident that this could be the northern most olive grove in Europe,” said Dafydd Gruffydd, Business Manager at Menter Môn. “You can’t go much more north than Llanbadrig and still reap the benefits of the Gulf Stream.
“We’re very much looking at this as a trial. The work is supported by the European Leader+ Programme that allows us to develop innovative enterprises on Anglesey with local companies such as Calon Lân. Our aim with the grove is to open people’s eyes to what is really possible on Anglesey.
“We’ve seen Calon Lân quickly gaining a reputation for developing innovative new healthy foods such as camelina oil. We feel Anglesey farmers could capitalise on the Calon Lân brand to commercialise locally grown olives.”
The first UK olive grove was planted last year in Devon and with a second planted in Shropshire earlier this year.
MORE DETAILS:
Leigh Roberts 01656 788366
Email: leigh@colemanroberts.co.uk
Calon Lan Ltd
Llys Goferydd
Bryn Cefni
Llangefni
Anglesey
LL77 7XA
Tel: 01758 612621
Email:geraint@madryn.co.uk
Contact:Geraint Hughes
Pictures are available from Leigh Roberts
Picture caption: BRANCHING OUT: Director of Calon Lan Geraint Hughes (left) and Menter Mon’s Dafydd Gruffydd with the new olive trees
An open day is planned for the summer. For more information contact Dafydd Gruffydd at Menter Môn on 01248 725713 or Geraint Hughes at Calon Lân at 01758 612621 or visit www.calonlanfood.com
OLIVE FACT FILE
The olive is native to the Mediterranean region, tropical and central Asia and various parts of Africa Archaeological evidence suggest that olives were being grown in Crete as long ago as 2,500 B.CThe olive is an evergreen tree growing to 50 ft in height with a spread of about 30 ft.The olive fruit is a green drupe, becoming generally blackish-purple when fully ripe. A few varieties are green when ripe and some turn a shade of copper brown. The cultivars vary considerably in size, shape, oil-content and flavour. The shapes range from almost round to oval or elongated with pointed ends.Olive fruits that are to be processed as green olives are picked while they are still green but have reached full size. They can also be picked for processing at any later stage up through full ripeness.
