A New Zealand Food Story with Ben Bayly – The Good Oil

The Good Oil team were excited to be featured in a recent episode of A New Zealand Food Story with Ben Bayly, and proud to welcome Ben and the production team to see firsthand how The Good Oil is made right here in the South Island. It was a fantastic opportunity to share our story, meet Ben and the crew behind the cameras, and talk about what matters most to us, which is supporting New Zealand farmers, producing quality cold-pressed oils, and creating something Kiwis can truly feel good about using every day.

Ben’s restaurant Ahi is known for celebrating the best of New Zealand, and that same passion for local food, sustainability and seasonality was clear from the moment we met him. He’s already a fan of The Good Oil, but what really interested him was the story behind it. Ben asked thoughtful questions about our crops, the rotations they’re grown in, and the relationship between what we grow and the soil it grows in. He was curious about how and why we keep things as natural as possible (cold-pressing without chemicals), and making sure nothing goes to waste. His interest in the full journey from seed to bottle, and how that impacts not just flavour but sustainability and farm resilience, was great to see — though as fans of the show, we weren’t surprised.

Being selected to feature on A New Zealand Food Story with Ben Bayly was a proud moment for our whole team, and the feedback has been wonderful. We believe what we do goes a lot further than creating quality homegrown cooking oils, and it’s great to have the chance to share some of that.

We really enjoyed the experience and its a real honour to be featured alongside so many iconic and inspiring Kiwi producers.

A short edit from A New Zealand Food Story, focused on our team and process.

One of the things we were most excited to explain to Ben was our cold-pressing process. For us, it’s a no-brainer. As Nick Murney explained on the show, “The actual natural process of cold pressing is taking seeds and extracting the oil. You leave all the flavours, the colours, and the full oil profile that comes out of the plant.” The oil is simply pressed once and the priority is high quality oil, not maximum extraction, which is common in our industry, and typically achieved by using high heat and solvents. Once pressed, the oil is simply triple filtered to remove any seed fragments, and then bottled. This local production also means our customers will often purchase oil from their local store that was pressed just a few weeks prior, rather than many months prior.

We believe in keeping things simple and natural, just as they should be. While refined oils work well in commercial settings where consistency is critical, our focus for The Good Oil has always been on the oil being natural and due to the special seed varieties we grow, these are perfect for the home kitchen, or when flavours and colours can really shine in commercial use. Cold-pressed oil brings flavour, colour, and goodness to everyday cooking, and that’s what more and more Kiwis are embracing.

Another highlight was showing Ben around a local sunflower field which is owned and operated by the McMillan family, and talking about the incredible work our growers do. We work with over 100 arable farmers across The South Island who grow our high oleic rapeseed and sunflower crops as part of a wider rotation system. The McMillan family have been with us since the beginning and are masters of growing amazing, healthy crops, which was evident by the sea of beautiful sunflowers standing over 6 feet tall. Our next stop was to a small rapeseed crop nearby which had been windrowed to help dry out the crop for harvest. What may be surprising to many is that when our rapeseed crops are in flower they are arguably more eye catching than the giant sunflowers, as they blanket the fields in bright yellow.

As our Agronomy Manager Keith Gundry explained during filming, these crops aren’t just great for producing oil, they’re great for the soil. Growing them gives the land a break from cereal crops and helps improve overall yield and soil health. And because we only harvest the seed and return the rest of the plant to the paddock, the cycle continues in a sustainable way that benefits both farm and future crops. Our Agronomy team, led by Keith, are based around the South Island to support our growers right from planting through to harvest and this allows our team to be involved through the entire journey and have ultimate traceability. Together with our growers it has been a learning process and a collaborative effort to ensure we are supporting the health of the soil and producing premium quality oils. Although The Good Oil team at our factory is fairly small, all of the farmers that we work with are an integral part of our team and they take great pride in helping us to produce such a popular product that they love to use at home too.

Ben was fascinated by how much oil can come from something as small as a rapeseed, and we still find it remarkable ourselves. These tiny seeds are where everything begins, but not just any seed will do.

We’ve been deliberate from day one in selecting premium high oleic seed varieties, both rapeseed and sunflower, that are naturally higher in monounsaturated fats, the same healthy fats found in olive oil. These specific varieties aren’t the same as traditional canola or standard sunflower seeds used in many refined oils. They’re specially naturally bred for better nutrition, better cooking performance, and better results in our cold-pressing process. These are the same types of seed varieties that have made cold pressed rapeseed and sunflower oils a popular healthy choice in Europe too.

We work closely with our growers to ensure the seeds we use are not only GE-free but also well-suited to New Zealand’s climate and growing systems. These crops thrive in South Island conditions and play a valuable role in farm rotations.

Once harvested, the seeds are cold-pressed using a gentle pressing process, no added heat, no chemicals, no bleaching or deodorising. The result is oil that retains all its natural flavour, colour, and nutritional value. That golden colour you see in the bottle comes straight from the seed, nothing added, nothing taken away.

It’s incredible to think that something so small can produce something so good. From seed to oil, every step is about preserving quality, supporting local, and bringing Kiwis a product that’s better for their kitchens and for our land.

As Ben put it, “Oil is a staple,” and having a locally made, high-quality oil available to New Zealanders is something we’re incredibly proud of, as the reality is most oils in your local supermarket have travelled a long distance to make it here. It is also very important to our team that our oils are affordable, and the support of The Good Oil has enabled our team to scale our production while preserving quality. This has enabled up to keep prices stable for 9 years, and even increase our bottle size during that time. Whether it’s being used at home or in restaurants, our aim has always been to create a healthier, more sustainable option that tastes great, and supports local.

Many of our South Island customers have discovered The Good Oil by seeing our vibrant yellow crops on their travels around the southern regions in Spring and Summer, and we enjoyed hearing that this is how our involvement with Ben and A New Zealand Food Story came about too. They saw one of our rapeseed crops while travelling the South Island to film a previous series, and added us to their list as a must visit. We are pleased a wider audience gets to see a glimpse of our crops on the show, many of the farms we work with are truly stunning even without the blanket of beautiful flowers, so when spring comes around it is a real head turner.

It means a lot to us that The Good Oil is produced right here in New Zealand, from the crops in the paddock to the team pressing, bottling and packing it all up. We work with local growers, contractors, and suppliers across the South Island and around New Zealand, and it’s something we’re genuinely proud to be part of.

That same local focus carries through to the way we support our wider community. Our annual Pink Ribbon campaign has raised over $80,000 for Breast Cancer Foundation NZ over the past three years, and we’ll be bringing back our limited edition pink bottle again in 2025 to continue to raise funds. It’s something that everyone really gets behind, including our customers, our growers, the retailers, our team and our suppliers and we are very grateful for the support.

We also make it a priority to support the local communities that we grow and produce in, by helping out schools, sports teams and community groups with product donations or fundraising support. Whether it’s a sausage sizzle, a school trip or some new team gear, we do our best to give back to the communities that support us and enable us to produce our products. Our fundraising programme has helped over 150 schools, teams and groups achieve their fundraising goals and we are really proud to have helped out.

We’re grateful for the chance to tell our story on A New Zealand Food Story with Ben Bayly, and we hope it gave people a better look at what goes into every bottle of The Good Oil. Thanks again to Ben and the team for stopping by and thank you to all who support our products and the farms that grow them.

Catch the full episode now on TVNZ+ by clicking here: A New Zealand Food Story with Ben Bayly