Kilis İli Organik Zeytin Üreticileri Birliği (Kilizi)

The mill, told properly

Kilis İli Organik Zeytin Üreticileri Birliği bottles under the Kilizi mark from Kilis province, in southeastern Türkiye. Its own about page records the union as formed on 6 May 2011, under the name Kilis İli Merkez İlçe Organik Zeytin Üreticileri Birliği, by olive growers who had begun organic farming in 2009. It gives 146 members and 12,895 decares under cultivation in the founding year; 201 members and 16,989 decares in 2012, the year in which 29 farmers completed their conversion period and members between them held 1,748 decares of organic land; and 257 member farmers by 2014, with more than 11,500 decares farmed organically and 126 of the members in full organic production while the remainder were still converting. At the ordinary general assembly of 2013 the union widened its scope to take in the province's districts and changed its name accordingly, a step its page describes as the first of its kind in Turkey. It hired an agricultural engineer in 2012, began offering advisory services in 2013 with a staff of four, and by 2015 employed seven.

The union's own integrated plant began trial pressing in December 2014 and was formally opened on 24 January 2015, at which point the page puts membership at 315; the bottling, packaging and storage project put to the GAP Regional Development Administration had been approved for support, and the union's page lists organic certificates under NOB, JAS, AB and TR. On the plant's award, the union records a silver medal for its Kilizi oil at the 13th National Extra Virgin Olive Oil Quality Competition run by Zeytin Dostu Derneği for the 2019–2020 season, and gives the entry figures: 99 samples submitted, 66 of them awarded after chemical and sensory analysis, distributed as 6 bronze, 14 silver, 42 gold and 4 premium. Zeytin Dostu Derneği announced that the competition had concluded on 30 March 2020. A separate union post records a Kilis olive and olive oil promotion day held at the Oylum Höyük basilica, where the then governor of Kilis, Recep Soytürk, said that olive stones of 4,500 years found at the mound were being tested to establish whether they share genes with the Kilis yağlık variety, work he described as continuing.

The variety and the region now carry a registration of their own. The Turkish Patent and Trademark Office entered Kilis Zeytinyağı in its geographical indications register as a mahreç işareti — an indication of source — under registration number 1021 on 4 February 2022, on an application filed on 1 November 2019 by the Kilis Ticaret İl Müdürlüğü, with the geographical boundary given as the province of Kilis. The registration document defines Kilis Zeytinyağı as natural extra virgin olive oil obtained from the Kilis yağlık variety grown in the province, describes the tree as of medium vigour with a spreading, drooping crown and small round fruit of thin skin and small stone at an oil content of about 33 per cent, and sets the production method as cold pressing on a two-phase continuous, centrifugal system requiring no pressure, with the malaxer held at 27 degrees, the paste stirred 45 minutes at medium speed, and the decanter running at 2,500 revolutions per minute.

From the public record: kilizi.org · ci.turkpatent.gov.tr · zeytindostu.org.tr