One page, plain language. These are the terms a mill consigns under. The buyer side of the marketplace has its own terms at olive.auction, and where the two meet — a sale — both apply to their own party.
Olive Auction is a neutral online marketplace operating timed auctions and fixed-price allocations as electronic auction brokerage. We never own, hold, store or take title to any lot, and we never receive or hold the buyer's money. The contract of sale forms directly between you and the winning bidder at the moment a lot closes sold, or, in a salvage window, at the moment you accept the standing bid or the bidder reaches your reserve. In these terms "you" and "the mill" mean the consigning producer, "buyer" the winning bidder, "lot" the unit of sale, and "hammer" the final price at close.
A producer account is a business account. Opening one, you confirm that you are entitled to consign for the named mill and that the mill is a registered food business operator in its country. Keep the account's details current; whatever happens under your sign-in counts as yours. An account that provides false information, leaves sales unhonoured or ships outside these terms can be closed — with a statement of reasons and the complaint route in §13.
Every lot is looked over before it goes live, usually the same day. Millennial and monumental claims carry their catalogue references — the Sénia inventory, a regional register, or the equivalent — and lab figures are printed as the named laboratory reported them. A first consignment is capped at €500 expected value until it delivers; the cap lifts with the first completed lot. A lot listed with auto-relist goes back up once, on the same terms, if it closes unsold. Listings carry the mandatory food particulars before bidding opens; you are the food business operator responsible for the lot, its labelling, its traceability and any recall.
Our fee is the flat first-year commission stated at account creation — 22% of the hammer, identical for every lot you consign. Listing is free; unsold lots owe nothing. When a lot sells, the 22% is pre-authorised on your card. That hold is what releases the buyer's contact and delivery address to you, and it is captured automatically when you log the shipment's tracking. We request the extended hold a car-hire desk uses, up to thirty days where the card network grants it. Where only the short kind is granted and it lapses before dispatch, the card on file is simply charged at dispatch instead; if that cannot go through, the commission falls due the ordinary way within 14 days. A cancelled sale releases the hold and nothing charges. Where a card hold cannot be placed at all, the commission is payable by transfer or declared crypto, and the buyer's details open on that declaration. Carriage sits entirely outside the fee: the rate you set on the lot is paid to you with the hammer and carries no commission.
A sold lot ships tracked, in the packaging declared on the listing, within five working days of settlement as the standard. Ten days from a remote estate is nothing unusual, and nothing happens beyond a reminder — just log the tracking when it goes. At fourteen days without dispatch the machine moves: the order is cancelled, the buyer is released, any card hold is released, and your account is paused until it is resolved with us. Anything the buyer had already paid you for a cancelled order goes back to them in full, immediately. The buyer details a hold unlocked exist for that settlement alone — using them after a cancelled sale, or for anything beyond fulfilling the order, ends the account. Repeated cancellations delist the mill.
Every lot carries your carriage rate per region you ship to, with per-country rates where you set them, and the buyer sees the figure for their own country before bidding. Where a real delivery cost turns up that the listing could not have covered — an island or remote address, an oversize consignment, a courier surcharge — you revise it from the order before the buyer pays, with the reason; the buyer is told at once and is free to withdraw from the sale. Once the buyer has paid, the figure stands.
The packaging standard: a rigid double-wall outer, a divider or moulded-pulp cell per bottle with no glass-on-glass contact, tins boxed rather than bare, and at least 2 cm of padding on every side — the logistics guide shows it. A buyer's damage claim arrives with photographs within 48 hours of delivery; you reship or refund. On a damage-refunded lot we retain 10% of hammer, and the full 22% where the lot shipped below the standard. Transit damage is never the buyer's cost — claim on your courier with the same photographs; that is what the tracked, insured service is for.
The buyer pays you directly on the rails you publish, referencing the order number. Which rails you can publish follows your delivery record: a new mill settles through buyer-protected rails, with further rails opening as lots deliver. We never receive, hold or transmit the buyer's payment and provide no escrow. A payment that will not be matched by delivery — short pressing, breakage, over-allocation, whatever the cause — goes back to the buyer immediately, to their original payment method; holding a buyer's money for oil that will not ship ends the account. Finding a counterparty here and completing the sale elsewhere to sidestep the commission costs both accounts.
A futures lot is the advance sale of oil from a coming pressing: the listing states the expected pressing and dispatch window, and the buyer pays before the oil exists. If the pressing fails, falls short or misses the stated window by more than 30 days, the buyer may cancel and you refund in full within 14 days. The buyer's payment for a futures lot carries your credit risk, and the listing says so.
You are the seller of record: VAT or sales tax on the sale, any invoice or receipt the buyer's or your own law requires, and your export formalities are yours. Import duties on cross-border shipments are the buyer's. US-bound food shipments need FDA Prior Notice whatever their value — yours or your courier's filing, confirmed before handover.
Bidding on your own lot, or arranging, encouraging or allowing anyone else to bid on it — to lift the price, to walk it toward reserve, for any reason — has no place here. Activity is monitored, flags are reviewed by a person, and a mill found shilling has both accounts suspended, its listings delisted and the affected sale voided; the matter can go to the relevant authorities. EU and UK consumers keep their statutory 14-day withdrawal right on wins and allocations, counted from delivery and ending when the seal is broken; sell sealed, ship sealed, and it rarely matters.
Your mill's name, story and photographs stay yours; listing grants us the licence to show them on the lot, the mill page and the catalogue for as long as you consign. "Olive Auction", the olive-branch device and the trade dress of both sites are ours, protected whether or not registered. The promotion kit is there for announcing your own lots.
Suspension, delisting or how the marketplace treated you: complain through the contact form and it is answered individually, in order, with reasons. Terms change with notice on this page; consigning after a change accepts it. If a provision is held invalid the rest stands, a failure to enforce is not a waiver, and your account stays with you — we may assign to a successor of the business. Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.
Your account stores your email, a salted-and-hashed password, your name, the mill, country and region, and the payout rails you choose to publish to your winners. Card details for the commission hold go directly to Stripe and never touch our systems. When a lot sells and the hold is on, you receive the buyer's name and delivery address for that settlement, and the buyer sees the rails you publish — that exchange is the purpose of the sale, and emails are never published or shared beyond it. Lab sheets on your dossier shelf are seen by you and us alone; the dossier buyers see carries the numbers you declare from them. Accounts are kept until you delete them; trading records of completed sales are retained as the service's books.
Questions, corrections or deletion: the contact form, answered within two working days.
