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Mornington Peninsula Olive Growers Project

The Mornington Peninsula Olive Association (MPOA) saw an opportunity for the association to provide regional leadership in promoting the production of high quality olive product including exceptional oils. In order to do this the MPOA wanted to undertake a review of present activities; identify opportunities and threats to growers and processors in the region; identify priorities and develop a plan to progress issues identified in the strategic review.

MPOA is one of eight Victorian regional olive growers associations. Like the regional industry itself, MPOA is a young organisation with approximately 40 members. The organisation is entirely run by volunteers who have already organised technical workshops and demonstrated the benefits of working together as an industry. A small number of larger growers on the Peninsula are not members of MPOA (4 to 5 growers with approximately 15-20,000 trees).

The Centre for Regional Development formed a small expert team to collect and analyse data to assist the group in thinking through the issues and arriving at agreed group decisions. In this way, the group would be closely connected with the process and own the results thus ensuring long term sustainability of strategies developed.