Dandaragan Estate Plantation Agronomic Design Issues: The grove was designed with world's best practice principles, methods and technology to ensure high quality, high productivity and very low operational costs. We consider the orchard to be world-leading in terms of its technical design and implementation. The Dandaragan grove is different to more traditional established and smaller groves in Europe which employ older methods and design principles. The grove was designed to produce high quality extra virgin olive oil. Size of Grove: 500 hectares. (400 plantable) Divided into over 2000 individual 0.2ha groves Trees are owned by the company (42%) and by investors in two Managed Investment Schemes (58%). Location: Dandaragan, Moore River Region, 170 km north of Perth. Within the optimal latitude range for olive growing. Location Profile: Mediterranean climate particularly favourable for olive growing. Optimal sequence of seasonal temperatures. Highly fertile soil and abundant high quality underground water. NB: European temperatures have been plotted over Australian seasons Number of Trees: 214,180 Varieties: Frantoio 97,950 Leccino 22,500 Piqual 11,900 Nevadillo Blanco 16,500 Corregiolo 25,000 Pendolino 10,330 Manzanillo 30,000 Trellising System: Steel rods supported by steel overhead wire and pine tensioners. This systems is new to the industry and has set a new benchmark for simple installation, low interference with tree trunks and resilience to decay. Irrigation: Secure high quality water source with 4.4 gigalitre licensed access to the Leederville aquifer. State-of-the-art automated computer-controlled Irrinet system designed by Netafim. Interlinked bores providing redundant backup and guaranteed water supply to all trees. The grove has over 700km of drip lines. Training and Pruning: Trees are being trained to enable high density fully mechanised overhead straddle harvesting. This emerging innovation within the industry should see production costs dramatically lowered. This technology has been proven in Argentina where yields and harvesting costs have both been dramatically improved. ^ top