A Cotswold farmer who bottles homegrown rapeseed oil has said that today's revelations of fraud and mislabelling in Europe's olive oil market can only add momentum to consumer appetite for trusted alternatives.

At a time when pricing for the luxury oil has dramatically escalated as farmers battle drought conditions, the EU has warned that consumers could now be being duped by bad practices in the olive oil sector.

But speaking in a brief break from harvesting at his farm near Broadway, Charlie Belldam told Punchline-Gloucester.com that while a change of government had added uncertainty for rapeseed farmers, better weather coincided with a sunnier outlook.

Mr Belldam said: "Everybody is conscious of price and olive oil has been going through the roof but people still want quality and there are a lot of olive oils out there that are cheap and are not what they say they are.

"We have just started harvest, it's finally sunny and while wage issues have had an inevitable effect, we are lucky that our business has continued to grow at a great rate."

Olive oil's position as a default choice had been weakened by recent issues across Europe. Against last year's 32% increase in the cost of the commodity as a result of climate challenges, the European Union stated on Monday that it had seen 50 potential cases of fraud and mislabelling in the consumer market – including a threefold rise in the incidence of contamination and pesticides when compared to the same period in 2018.

In one example, olive oil from Israel which was labelled as "Extra Virgin" had been found in Germany to be lower-grade and higher-acidity lampante oil, which is not suitable for human consumption unless further refined.

Mr Belldam, who set up the Cotswold Gold brand 14 years ago, has managed to maintain core product prices as of last year, with a 500ml bottle of cold-pressed rapeseed marketed at £4.95.

He said: "The last three to four years have been very difficult in terms of finding seasonal workers, given Brexit, Covid and then the Ukraine - everything has had a knock-on effect. But we have a good, steady team and have increased our work force to 20 people while we have also employed five more employed in the last month."

With good harvesting conditions prevailing this week, he said the business was now "flat-out" and was able to move quickly thanks to its investment policy.

 "Our strategy has meant we have spent severall million over the last eight years on harveting technology, but that move is paying off. Owning all your own kit, with a strict upgrading and replacement policy, is crucial because when you need to go, you need to go now, and you need that reliability."

He added: "The joy of going for a cold-pressed rapeseed is that it is British, its got full traceability, made here - you can't get more faith in a product than our business model, from field to bottle."