Protect the Value of Your Olive Harvest
2026 olive harvest · Guercif.com
Last season there were olives everywhere and not enough hands. Picking ran late, fruit stayed on the trees too long, and a great deal of value was lost between the grove and the mill.
This season is the chance to do it properly. Quality determines how much value your harvest can preserve, and much of that quality is won or lost before the olives reach the mill.
Make this an exceptional year.
Plan. Harvest. Move. Mill.
Before you pick
Plan
Before you pick a single olive, know:
- When you expect to harvest
- Who will do the picking
- How the fruit will be collected
- What containers you will use
- How it will get to the mill
- Which mill will process it — and when
Arrange your mill before you pick. Know which mill, and know when it will be running. Mills set their campaign dates around the crop — find out theirs before you start picking, not after. Olives waiting for a slot lose value every day they wait.
Picking
Harvest
Handle olives as food, because that is what they are.
Try to avoid:
- Damaging or crushing the fruit
- Contamination
- Mixing good fruit with damaged or spoiled fruit
Where you can, keep olives picked from the tree separate from olives collected off the ground. They are not the same product and they should not end up in the same batch.
Handling and transport
Move
Do not let picked olives sit.
- Use clean, ventilated crates
- Do not pile fruit deep or compress it
- Keep olives out of the sun and away from heat
- Get them to the mill quickly
Crates, not heaps.
Olives begin losing quality within hours of picking. Heat, weight and time all work against you — and none of it can be undone later.
Milling
Mill
Whenever possible, arrange milling with a unit holding the applicable ONSSA sanitary approval or authorization. This supports proper handling, traceability and access to formal markets. Requirements for commercialisation and export may vary depending on the product and destination.
Arrange your milling in advance, and tell us which mill you plan to use.
Worth knowing: oil obtained from olive pomace (grignon) belongs to a different category and cannot be presented or sold as virgin olive oil.
The mill cannot restore quality that was already lost before milling.
Know where every batch came from
Whenever you can, write down:
- Producer
- Grove or location
- Harvest date
- Delivery date and time
- Mill
- Milling batch
Traceability starts at the tree, not at the bottle.
You do not need a complicated system. A notebook is enough. What matters is that the information exists at all.
Tell us what you expect to have
Talk to us before the harvest, not after. Even rough answers help.
- Are you selling olives, oil, or both?
- Roughly how much do you expect to have?
- Which mill do you plan to use?
- Will your oil be bottled or sold in bulk — and in what packaging?
- Would you like help with packaging, labelling, photography or video?
The earlier we know, the more we can do. Preparing a product, sorting out packaging and photographing or filming it properly all take time — and once the harvest starts, nobody has any.
Cannot do it all yourself?
Guercif.com runs harvest teams, grove maintenance and field services across the province. If the plan above is more than you can manage alone, that is what these services are for.
2026 harvest
Tell us about your harvest
Guercif.com is working with growers, cooperatives and harvest partners on quality, traceability and market value. Write to us in Arabic, French or English.