Olive cultivation on commercial scale was initiated in Pakistan through Italian funded project back in 2012. Following the encouraging results, Government of Pakistan launched a PSDP- funded project “Promotion of Olive Cultivation on commercial scale in Pakistan” during 2014.
According to an estimate about 2.90 million plants on 25,600 acres has been planted so far under various projects. Olive Fruit is being harvested in considerable quantity in Pakistan and it is the need of hour to provide olive processing units in major olive growing region to facilitate the farmers at their doorstep and to ensure that economic benefits of the olive cultivation can directly be passed to the farmer.
Catering this need, the PSDP project has installed 09 advanced oil extraction units (03 with capacity of 600 kg/hr and 06 of 100 kg/hr) along with all basic accessories like harvesting baskets, oil analyzer for quality analysis, filling, / capping/ sealing machine and olive oil storage containers. These oil extracting units are important part of olive value chain in the country and will serve as pull factor for the uplift of this sector. These were the remarks given by Dr. Muhammad Azeem Khan Chairman PARC, Islamabad while inaugurating the Olive Processing Unit installed at NARC on 17th Sept, 2020 under the said project.