The English Olive Co., a sister company to Lincolnshire business GH Hoyles Ltd, has completed its first harvest.
Based near Spalding, the 10ha site was established in 2024 and will now be processed through the UK’s first on-farm olive press and bottling line. It puts the company on track to produce the first commercially pressed English olive oil.
The crop was hand-picked by friends and family and taken to the press within hours to preserve the quality of the oil.
Farmer David Hoyles says “We were pleased to have our first, albeit, small harvest, but it does show that olive trees can flower, fruit and mature on a commercial and field scale in the UK. Unfortunately, the recent frosts and strong winds and rain knocked off some of the olives, and the size of the fruit is smaller than the traditional growing areas of the Mediterranean, but the taste profiles of this 2025 crop are fantastic – grassy, fresh, piney, with a very good peppery kick at your throat, due to fantastic polyphenol levels.
“The supply of our English olive oil will be very limited in this first year. As the trees grow and increase maturity each year, then we hope olive numbers, and hence oil volumes, will also increase year on year,” he adds.
“Following the mild, but wet and cloudy disappointing weather we all experienced in 2024, 2025 has been good for the olives. They flowered in July and the fruit grew well over the summer.
“I was unsure how ripe olives would get in UK climate, but with summer conditions really stretching out into October, the olives have turned a good blushed green colour, and this has helped the flavour profiles. It’s a shame that the frosts and wind have impacted yield, but we are still learning and will continue to give the trees our best efforts going forward.”
Adapting to the climate
The decision to plant olives came from a need to future-proof the business against changing weather patterns and increased volatility in traditional crop markets.
“We wanted long-term security in food production. Some of our existing crops were struggling with the hotter, drier conditions, so we looked for alternatives more suited to a warming climate. Admittedly, we’ve pushed this to the extreme, but olives fit that brief. They’re resilient, they thrive in heat, and they allow us to diversify with a crop we can process and market ourselves.”
It will also provide the family with greater control over pricing, as well as a succession opportunity, with multiple generations involved in the project.
The crop was grown using low-input practices, including drip fertigation and no insecticides or fungicides. Production is expected to scale as the grove matures, with the family aiming to expand the amount of products available to meet consumer demand.
“When the volume of olives increases, we hope to invest in a self-propelled harvester in place of hand harvesting,” says David.