An Industrial Heritage: North Aegean Oil Mills

My first memory of olives is my father taking me up on an olive crate and trying to teach me how to spread the dough from the stone into the sack. I have never forgotten the feel of the olive pits on my little fingers.
I think that the olives I met on that olive crate, which shaped the course of my whole life, were bestowed on our family and I feel grateful.
Our family is one of those who came from Crete with the exchange. Some geographies are known for certain plants. Like the whole Aegean geography, in Crete, which is a part of it, olives were indispensable for life. When our family came to Turkey, they came with knowledge and passion for olives. That passion took a different path when my father started dreaming about the factory across the street from their house in Küçükkuyu, which had been left by Çakiraki, a Greek who had been forced to leave during the exchange. The steam-powered, stone-built olive oil factory was the stuff of dreams for who knows how many others. My father’s dreams
At the age of 27, it becomes a reality.
This building later became both my playground and the inspiration for my dreams. The stone paved road that welcomes you when you enter the arched wooden street door, the vines reaching to the floor on the corner stone walls that are too big for one person to lift, the oil storage rooms with jars underneath when you turn left, the workers’ dormitories on the upper floors… The stairs leading from the welcome room on the right side of the door and the guest bedrooms… And the huge factory chimney at the end of the two-story Stone Factory. Nothing engraved in our minds in our childhood has ever left us. It has always been a companion.
During my university years, when I used to pass through Aydın during the olive harvest season, the sight of the chimneys of olive oil factories and the smell of pomace intertwined with each other would make my nose hurt and tears would fall from my eyes.
I used to stay with my father in Küçükkuyu for at least a month during the olive harvest, which became a passion in the depths of my soul. It was an indescribable feeling to see the olive oil flowing from the sacks stacked on top of each other as the press pressed. That’s why, from high school onwards, every year I would receive absenteeism letters in “yellow envelopes” at home.
Anyone who spends such a childhood and youth is destined.
I was also destined to produce olives and olive oil.
On the other hand, I also believe that numbers have symbolic meanings (I also believe in symbolism). For me, this number is 33. My grandfather Mithat As, born in 1333, left the military service and returned to Küçükkuyu and continued the family craft at the age of 33. I was born when my father was 33 and it was at the age of 33 that I founded the Mavras Factory with Mehmet Betil.
Yes… We established the factory with Mehmet Betil at the age of 33.
Mehmet Betil’s acquaintance with olive oil began with the introduction of old stone olive oil factory buildings into his life. He restored an olive oil factory in Sazlıaltı and turned it into a living space. Registering the old stone olive oil factory in Sazlıaltı with the board of monuments despite not being obliged to do so, having the Küçükkuyu olive oil factory, of which he was a partner, renovated to prevent it from being exposed to the ravages of time, are great efforts that are underappreciated for the region.
Our shared passion for olives and olive oil also reinforced our desire to create an olive oil brand.
In my childhood, none of the olive oil producers – including my father – had the idea of becoming a brand. For me, olive oil would only be meaningful if it became a brand. These thoughts were in my mind from a very young age. Our family name in Crete was Mavrazade, and after we came to Turkey, the surname law made it compulsory to take As. I was in my teens when I put these two words together and named myself “Mavras”.
Of course, it was inevitable that the name of the factory and the products we founded with Mehmet Betil would be “Mavras”.
For Mavras, olives and olive oil are not just a plant and production. For Mavras, olives and olive oil are a great history and culture.
Because we look at it this way, in long conversations with our neighbor Kamil Fırat during the pandemic in Adatepe, I thought that taking photographs of what was left of the old olive oil factories and consulting the memories of the people who lived in those times was the most important legacy to be left to history, and the question of what to do about it laid the foundation of this book.
Those factories are the memory of this region. This book is an important document that will at least ensure that those factories will be carried into the future, and that future generations will find answers to the question of what life was like here in the past.
On behalf of MAVRAS
Melike As and Mehmet Betil