Producing olive oil since 1873
Hacı Reşit Ağa began producing olive oil under the family name in Antakya in 1873. His descendants still press it, from the same groves in Altınözü, Hatay — and supply it, in bottle and in bulk, to partners across the world.
Our heritage
Olive oil production under the Kuseyri name began formally in 1873, with our founder, Hacı Reşit Ağa. He pressed the family's own fruit on the hills above Antakya and sold the oil to the merchants of the old city. A century and a half later the equipment has changed entirely. The judgement behind it has not.
Antakya has always been a place where things pass through — Roman roads, Silk Road caravans, Ottoman trade routes, Mediterranean shipping lanes. Hacı Reşit Ağa understood early that a name travels further than a harvest. Every tin that leaves Antakya Yağ Sanayi still carries his.
Origins · The Fertile Crescent
The Fertile Crescent is the arc of well-watered land that curves from the Levant up across northern Syria and southern Türkiye, then down along the Tigris and Euphrates into Mesopotamia. It is where wheat, barley, lentils, figs, grapes — and the olive — were first taken from the wild and farmed. Hatay sits at the hinge of that arc, where the crescent meets the Mediterranean.
Wild olive — Olea europaea var. sylvestris — has grown along this eastern Mediterranean corridor since long before anyone thought to press it. Archaeobotanical work across the Levant places the domestication of the olive here, roughly six thousand years ago: the moment a bitter wild fruit was selected, grafted and turned into an orchard crop. From this corridor the tree moved west with traders and settlers, to Greece, to Italy, to Spain, and eventually to every Mediterranean climate on earth.
Our groves sit inside that original range. Antioch-on-the-Orontes — today's Antakya — appears on every map of the crescent, and the Amuq plain below us carries one of the longest records of continuous settled agriculture anywhere in the world. When we say our fruit is native, we are not using the word loosely.
The farms · Altınözü
Altınözü sits in the southern folds of Hatay, where limestone ridges catch the sea air and the Amanos range holds back the desert wind. Growers across the Mediterranean know the name; the district is widely regarded as producing some of the highest-quality olives in the region — and its oils have carried Hatay's reputation for generations.
Our groves are worked the way they were in Hacı Reşit Ağa's day: pruned by hand, harvested by hand onto nets, and picked at the exact moment the fruit turns — early enough for polyphenols, late enough for yield. We do not buy anonymous fruit to fill a tank.
Free-draining calcareous soils and 300+ days of sun give fruit that is concentrated rather than watery — the foundation of a peppery, structured oil.
Fruit is separated by parcel and milled within 24 hours of picking. Nothing waits overnight in a sack; nothing ferments on the way to the mill.
Every lot is recorded from parcel to pallet, with analysis on acidity, peroxide and sensory profile available for each shipment.
Our craft
Great olive oil is subtraction, not addition. Our work is to remove everything that stands between the fruit and the bottle — heat, time, oxygen, and haste.
Picked by hand and by parcel from late October, at the turn from green to violet.
Malaxed and separated below 27°C, protecting polyphenols and aromatic compounds.
Rested in temperature-controlled stainless tanks under nitrogen, away from light and air.
Filled close to shipment so the oil reaches your shelf as young as the harvest allows.
Our products
Extra virgin, virgin and riviera — the same Altınözü fruit, graded and finished for three different uses. Available in retail bottles, catering tins and tanker-scale bulk.
Cold-extracted from hand-picked Altınözü fruit within a day of harvest. Green almond, cut grass and a clean pepper finish — our most structured oil, and the one we are judged on.
The same groves, a slightly later pick and a rounder profile. Mechanically extracted and unrefined, with softer bitterness — built for daily cooking and food service.
Refined olive oil blended back with our own virgin oil for aroma. Neutral, stable and high-smoke-point — the grade professional kitchens and manufacturers ask for by volume.
Leadership
“My family has been answering for the quality of this oil since 1873. I am not about to be the generation that stops.”
A direct descendant of Hacı Reşit Ağa, Mehmet Reşat Kuseyrioğlu leads Antakya Yağ Sanayi from the head office on Saray Caddesi — a few minutes' walk from the market where the family's oil was first sold. He oversees the groves in Altınözü, the mill, and every export relationship the company holds.
Wholesale · Private label · Export
We work with importers, distributors, retail groups and food manufacturers who need consistent Turkish olive oil in volume — and a producer who answers the phone. Own-estate fruit, our own storage, and documentation that survives any audit.
Contact
Samples, specifications, price indications or a visit to the groves — write to us and a member of the family will reply.