Our leading producer is taking its impressive skills to California
Australia's biggest olive oil producer, the Chris Corrigan-backed Boundary Bend, is launching an assault on the US market.
The family business's main brand, Cobram Estate, won the most awards - five gold, four silver and two best in class - at this year's New York olive oil competition, the third time in a row it had collected the most medals at the competition.
Earlier this year it built a mill near Sacramento in California and has ambitions to increase US production from the current level of less than 3 per cent of sales. Almost all of the olive oil sold in the US is imported. 
Boundary Bend was founded 15 years ago by Rob McGavin and Paul Riordan, and has become the largest local producer of Australian oil with about 31 per cent of the market though its Cobram Estate and Red Island brands.
Their families still control 40 per cent of the company, although it's now an unlisted public company with about 500 shareholders.
Last year the company raised $5 million from Corrigan, the former BT Australia and Patrick Stevedores chief, in a deal that valued the company at close to $200m, to help finance its American push.
McGavin and Riordan met at agricultural college and, after raising money from family and friends, planted 500hectares of olive trees on a bend in the Murray River between Mildura and Swan Hill. In 2006, they bought the Cobram Estate brand from the Dugan family for $2.1m and in 2009 the business was transformed by the acquisition of 6000ha of trees out of the collapsed Timbercorp - about 2.5m trees - for $60m. They financed the deal by on-selling the water rights to superannuation funds for $50m in a sale and leaseback arrangement, and by raising $21m in equity and $30m in debt (it costs about $30m a year to manage and harvest the groves).
When asked why he doesn't list the company on the Australian Securities Exchange, CEO McGavin replies: "Why would I want to spend all day talking to fund managers? We'd be too distracted."
The shares trade on what's called a low- turnover market (limited to $500,000 a year in trades). Brokers Bell Potter and Taylor Collison run an annual book build each   November. At the last one, in 2014, 476,530 shares changed hands at $3.30 each - 50c below what Chris Corrigan had paid six months earlier.
That followed Boundary Bend announcing a loss for the 2013-2014 of $1.7m, down from a profit in previous year of $28m. The loss followed a big drop in the amount of fruit harvested, caused by a run of high temperatures, and a fall in the global olive oil price, mainly due to a record crop in Spain. Corrigan knew the loss was coming, but was happy to take a long-term position.
Prices are rising again in anticipation of a smaller Spanish crop and McGavin forecasts a return to profits this year.
He claims the company extracts 10 per cent more oil from olives than any other producer in the world. It produces 60 per cent of Australia's olive oil from 18 per cent of the trees.
In   June last year, Boundary Bend bought a 3.56ha site at Woodland near Sacramento and has built a mill, labratory, warehouse and office on the site. McGavin told shareholders last year: "We believe we can replicate, in the USA, the success of our Australian integrated business, but we are taking a conservative, long-term approach to our business strategy and will source much of our supply from third-party olive farmers."
Although the market for olive oil in the US is 350,000 tonnes a year, just 10,000 tonnes is grown and produced there, so, McGavin, Riordan and Corrigan believe there is plenty of potential to increase local production.