Homegrown olive leaf extract

Olive leaf extract is a known immunity booster, so we’ve been giving GreenKiwi Supplements OliveXtract a whirl, partly because we love the fact that the extract comes from leaves handpicked from olive trees in the far north.

Working with olive oil producers, GreenKiwi Supplements diverts the leaves from their traditional waste stream model into a unique New Zealand bio-active. Within hours, the olive leaf by-product from growers is harvested, washed and sent directly to a raw processing facility in Auckland, where key bio-active compounds are preserved or ‘locked in’. The entire process is raw, and results in a supplement that’s pure, e ective and as close to nature as possible.

GreenKiwi founder Max Donaldson began building his business at Kerikeri High School through the Young Enterprise scheme with the goal of developing the world’s first New Zealand-grown olive leaf supplement and revolutionising a typical waste stream for olive oil producers (the leaves). “It was with an immune system on rock bottom that I picked up an olive leaf supplement and it read ‘made using Australian olive leaves’. Months later my neighbours were dumping tonnes of olive leaves as part of their grove pruning process. It was this realisation of the need for an olive leaf supplement from New Zealand that I decided to do something about it,” says Donaldson.

The young entrepreneur has succeeded in diverting waste into a product containing one of the most powerful antioxidant compounds in the world and recently represented New Zealand on the global stage at the Dubai Expo.