Olive oil production in Marmara Island goes back to the period of Rome people. Olive cultivation was one of the major existence means of the local population of that period and the Turkish people of Girit domiciled to the Marmara Island according to the interchange provision of the 1924 Lausanne Treaty. During that period, everyone made use of olive for oneself. The population dealing with the olive production had their own tanks and olive oil jars. Most of these storage means were the remaining from the Rum people, while some of them were new. In that period olive oil production was difficult.

In later years, as the islanders understand that it is difficult to benefit from the individual and small-scale production efforts, in 1960 some of the leading olive producers became members of the Erdek Olive Agriculture Sale Cooperative, encouraging other producers of Marmara to do so.  Then all of them become a partner of the Cooperative, realizing the benefits from their production.

They were harvesting olives and on the following day, they were delivering them to the Erdek cooperative via delivery motorcycles. Sometimes they couldn’t deliver the olives to Erdek for a few days due to bad air conditions and instead they would store them in tanks. But that method was not preferable. In 1988 experts of Erdek Cooperative purchased olives for the first time; after, on 30.12.1988, 996 Marmara Island Olive Agriculture Sale Kooperatifi was established.

Founders;

1. HALİL RÜŞTÜ KIRIK

2. EMİN TOKSÖZ

3. ALİ AKSU

4. ZEKİ ÖZKAN

5. ALİ ÖZKAYA

6. OSMAN BOZKURT

7. RAHMİ GÜNDOĞAN

8. KADİR ALGAN

9. RECEP ÇELİKLİ

10. MUSTA MERSİN

The cooperative did not have a building of its own, so a building was rented. However, purchased olives were being pickled in depots of Erdek. In the first year, 182 tons of olive purchased and delivered from 424 partners from Erdek cooperative to our cooperative. In 1990, we purchased the current management building and field of our depot for a low cost, by the decision of the Municipality Council and the construction works were carried out by our association. The mayor had great contributions to the establishment of our cooperative. The mayor, Halil Rüştü Kırık, was born in Marmara Island in 1941. He was elected as the Mayor of the Marmara Municipality. He acted as the first Chair of Marmara Island Cooperative in 1988. He was elected as a member of our Board of Association on 17.12.1991. Acted as the mayor for three subsequent terms, Kırık died in 2005 due to a serious disease contracted in 2005.  

Our cooperative moved to a new building in June 1993, pickling the product of the year 1993/1994 in our own depot. Marmara Depot with 510 tons of capacity was adequate for that season. The existence of a cooperative in the region put the producers into action, increasing olive production every passing day. Harvest of the years 2000 and 2002 exceeded 1000 tons. Due to the increase in olive production, Marmara Island Cooperative started to have a shortage of storage and most of the olives were pickled in Erdek Depots. Therefore, in 2000 the field next to our cooperative was purchased and the construction of our HALİL RÜŞTÜ KIRIK depot was completed and put into service during the 2005/2006 Olive Purchase Campaign.

On the other hand, our cooperative has 756 registered partners.