A bumper olive harvest is creating headaches at the processing end in the Marlborough region.

A 30 grower olive oil cooperative in Marlborough has been running its presses 24 hours a day since May to cope with the 240 tonnes of olives its growers have produced.

Cooperative chairman, Mark Heard, says the unseasonably warm and wet weather has created an abundance of olives in the region.

But he says that’s not necessarily a good thing as the extra rain also means the olives have a very high water content – making it much more expensive to extract the oil.

Mark Heard says growers will be leaving olives on the trees this year because the cooperative’s presses simply are not big enough to cope with the harvest.    

He says this season may be the catalyst the Marlborough cooperative needs to generate the will power to invest in new olive presses.