On windswept Fenland, two metres below sea level and a mile from the Wash, a Lincolnshire family has done something most growers would once have written off as pure fantasy: they’ve harvested and pressed what is believed to be the world’s most northerly commercial crop of olives – and produced the first commercially pressed English olive oil.

The venture, run as The English Olive Co, is a sister business to long-established arable farm G H Hoyles Ltd at Long Sutton, near Spalding. The family planted a 10-hectare olive grove in spring 2024, with around 18,000 trees across ten varieties, making what they describe as the UK’s first commercial olive grove and – as multiple trade titles now report – the most northerly commercial grove in the world.

In early December 2025, friends and family hand-picked the first crop and rushed it to what the business says is the UK’s first on-farm olive press and bottling line, installed on site. The fruit was milled within hours to preserve flavour, producing a limited run of cold-pressed English olive oil that will be sold exclusively online.

A Mediterranean crop on Fenland silt

Farmer David Hoyles, an AF Group director and fifth-generation grower, says the inspiration came while touring vegetable farms in southern Europe. Seeing olives thriving on high-quality land alongside brassicas and salads, on soils not unlike his reclaimed Fenland silt, convinced him the idea was worth more than a holiday daydream.

“We farm right on the limit of where olives could grow,” he told AF Group’s “Changemaker” series. “I looked into the investment needed, and how changes after Brexit would affect import rules and costs… instead of driving over to get a few trees I needed economies of scale – a lorry full.” 

That shift in mindset turned a potential hobby into a serious diversification project. In spring 2024, after extensive research and advice from growers in Spain, Portugal, France and Italy, the team planted 18,000 trees on 10 hectares, selecting ten different varieties to spread climatic and disease risk. 

The olive plantation sits within a broader 250-year family enterprise growing wheat, potatoes, peas, mustard seed for Colman’s, sugar beet and seed crops, backed by digital farming, renewable energy and extensive pollen, nectar and wildlife areas.

Climate change as the catalyst

Hoyles is explicit that the move into olives is a direct response to hotter, drier conditions that have begun to stress some traditional crops on his Fenland soils.

“We wanted long-term security in food production,” he told Farmers Weekly. “Some of our existing crops were struggling with the hotter, drier conditions, so we looked for alternatives more suited to a warming climate… olives fit that brief.” 

The 2025 growing season played into that logic. Lincolnshire Today reports that the fruit benefitted from a warm year with summer-like conditions running into October, helping olives reach a “blushed green” ripeness rarely associated with the English lowlands.

At the same time, the season underlined how volatile Britain’s changing climate has become. Late frosts, strong winds and heavy rain knocked off a proportion of the crop and left remaining fruit smaller than typical Mediterranean olives.

The result, as Hoyles himself has put it, is an “albeit small” inaugural harvest – but one that proves olive trees can flower, set fruit and ripen on a field-scale in the UK. 

The first English olive oil

The crop was hand-picked by family and friends and taken straight to the on-farm mill, where it was washed, crushed and cold-pressed within hours.

Hoyles says the early oil has exceeded expectations on quality, even if volumes are tiny:

The 2025 oil is “grassy, fresh, piney, with a very good peppery kick at your throat, due to fantastic polyphenol levels,” he told several farming titles.

Key commercial points:

  • Supply will be very limited in year one, with The English Olive Co warning that bottles will be sold solely through its own website “while stocks last”.

  • The business plans a limited run of cold-pressed English olive oil from the 2025 harvest, followed by a first full edition of extra virgin olive oil produced entirely on the farm – from tree to bottle – in 2026.

  • Branding leans heavily on provenance and health claims, positioning olives and extra virgin oil within a Mediterranean-inspired, gut-health and heart-health narrative.

From a market perspective, this is ultra-niche. Ten hectares – even at mature Mediterranean-style yields – will never challenge Spain or Italy. But the commercial logic isn’t about bulk: it’s about high-value, story-rich, short-supply-chain product, sold direct to consumers willing to pay for something genuinely new in British food.

Agronomy: low-input olives on reclaimed silt

The English Olive Co is positioning the grove as a low-input, climate-smart system:

  • The plantation uses drip fertigation and targeted irrigation to minimise water use and nutrient losses.

  • The farm reports no insecticide or fungicide use on the grove to date, relying instead on variety choice and careful monitoring.

  • The trees are integrated into an already diverse rotation that includes cover crops and pollen- and nectar-rich habitats, intended to support pollinators and beneficial insects.

Technically, Hoyles is farming near the bioclimatic edge for olives. Standard agronomic references suggest traditional, rain-fed plantations in Mediterranean climates yield in the range of 7–14 tonnes of fruit per hectare under mature conditions, though actual performance varies widely year to year.

The Lincolnshire grove is still at a very early stage, so it would be misleading to project specific future yields. What we can say is that the densities (around 1,800 trees/ha) and drip-irrigated system place it closer to modern intensive groves than to scattered, traditional orchards – offering the potential, in theory, for competitive yields if the climate allows.

Economics: diversification, risk and reward

Financial details of the project have not been disclosed, but some outlines are clear:

  • Planting 18,000 trees, installing a press, bottling line and storage, and developing a direct-to-consumer brand will have required substantial up-front capital.

  • Unlike many commodity crops, olives are perennial and slow to establish; authority sources suggest groves can take several years to hit full production, though intensive systems can start bearing commercial fruit earlier.

  • On the upside, integrated processing gives The English Olive Co the chance to capture value at every stage of the chain – from raw fruit to finished bottled oil – rather than selling into anonymous bulk markets.

From an agri-business perspective, this looks like a textbook example of climate-driven diversification:

  1. Spread risk across enterprises – olives join a portfolio already spanning root crops, combinables and mustard.

  2. Move up the value chain – on-farm processing and direct sales reduce exposure to commodity price swings.

  3. Leverage provenance marketing – “world’s most northerly commercial olive grove” is a story built for food media and high-end retail.

The flip side is concentration of risk in a single location and climate. The 2025 frosts and storms show how a single weather event can halve output in a year. While that’s true for all fruit crops, olives on Fenland soils have few historical data points to guide risk assessment.

A bellwether for climate adaptation in UK agriculture

So is this a quirky one-off, or the start of a new chapter for British farming? A cautious reading suggests both:

  • Proof of concept: Multiple independent outlets – Farmers Weekly, Farmers Guide, Farm Contractor, CPM and Lincolnshire Today – have now verified the harvest, the grove size and the presence of the on-farm mill, confirming this is more than a PR stunt.

  • Climatic fringe: The grove lies right at the northern climatic boundary for olives. Success will depend on how quickly regional temperatures continue to climb, and whether extremes (late frosts, heavy storms, winter waterlogging) can be managed.

  • Replicability: Other UK growers have experimented with small groves and ornamental olives, but nothing on this commercial scale with integrated pressing. Whether the Hoyles model can be replicated will depend on land type, capital, appetite for risk – and continued consumer demand for premium, hyper-local products.

In the wider context of UK agriculture, the project sends three important signals:

  1. Climate change is already reshaping crop portfolios. This isn’t a hypothetical 2050 scenario; a Fens farmer has already reconfigured 10 ha of prime arable land around a Mediterranean tree crop in search of resilience.

  2. Perennial, tree-based systems are moving from niche to mainstream discussion. Olives join vines, nut orchards and agroforestry plantings as part of a gradual shift toward perennial crops with deeper roots and longer lifespans – potentially better adapted to heat and drought.

  3. Brand, story and sustainability credentials are as crucial as agronomy. Without the narrative – first English olive oil, world’s most northerly grove, low-input management – this would be just another diversification. With it, the project sits squarely in the sweet spot of premium food marketing.

What it means for farmers, retailers and policymakers

For other farmers considering similar ventures, the Lincolnshire grove offers lessons and caveats:

  • Start with your soils and microclimate. The Hoyles land is deep, fertile silt with good structure and drainage – not every UK farm can offer that baseline.

  • Plan for volatility, not averages. The first harvest has already shown that frost and wind risk will be real constraints; insurance, shelter belts, frost protection and variety choice will be central.

  • Think whole-chain from day one. Without the on-farm mill and branded bottling, the economics would be far harder to justify; the project is as much about food business and marketing as it is about agronomy.

For retailers and food brands, the emergence of a home-grown extra virgin olive oil – however tiny the volumes – dovetails with broader commitments to shorter, more transparent supply chains and provenance-driven ranges.

And for policymakers, the grove is a real-world example of how climate adaptation, diversification and value-adding can play out on commercial farms – with far more nuance and risk than many strategy documents suggest.

Outlook: A small harvest with big symbolic weight

In volume terms, this first English olive harvest is a drop in the ocean – a curiosity compared with the millions of tonnes produced across the Mediterranean basin each year.

But symbolically, it matters. A Fenland farm, rooted in two and a half centuries of arable tradition, has bet real money and real land on a Mediterranean tree crop – and, at the first attempt, brought a commercial harvest to the press.

Whether English olives become a modest speciality or remain a one-off curiosity will depend on climate, markets and farmer appetite. For now, the sight of olive trees bending in the Lincolnshire wind is a vivid reminder that British agriculture is entering a new, less predictable era – and that some of the most interesting answers may come from unexpected crops.

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