Engineered surfaces from recycled olive pits

Stone from the grove —
no quarry required.

What the press discards each season, we clean, grind and bind into dense panels that machine like stone — with a warm speckled grain no quarry on earth can produce.

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Surface study N°01 Honed face · rendered grain study Nablus press stream

01The material

A surface with a harvest date

Every autumn, olive presses across the Mediterranean produce two things: oil, and thousands of tonnes of pits. The oil is treasured. The pits are burned, dumped, or left in heaps behind the mill.

Olive Stone takes that second harvest seriously. The pits are cleaned of pomace, dried, ground to a controlled range of fragment sizes, and bound under pressure into a dense engineered panel. The result cuts, routs and polishes with standard stone and wood tooling — and carries a grain of bone, umber and green-black that is unmistakably of the grove.

Granite is quarried, shipped and heavy, and every slab scars a hillside somewhere. Our raw material falls from trees an hour from the workshop, in a region that has pressed olives for four thousand years. That is not a marketing story added to a material. It is the material.

Fragment scale0.5 – 8 mm graded

GrainBone · umber · green-black

FaceHoned, matte sealed

StudyRendered — samples ship on request

02Provenance

From grove to panel

Four stages, all of them within reach of the mill. The material never crosses an ocean to become itself.

  1. Stage 01

    The grove

    Terraced hillsides around Nablus, harvested by the same families every October. The fruit goes to the press. So, eventually, does everything else.

  2. Stage 02

    The press

    The mill separates oil from paste. Left behind: a seasonal mountain of crushed pits — dense, hard, and until now, worth less than the fuel to haul it.

  3. Stage 03

    The pit

    Cleaned, dried and milled to a graded range of fragments — from visible shards to fine dust. The mix of sizes is what gives each panel its depth of grain.

  4. Stage 04

    The panel

    Fragments and binder pressed into a dense slab, cured, calibrated and honed. From here it behaves like stone: cut it, edge it, install it.

No two panels repeat. The grain is set by the season, the grove and the grind — not by a print head.

Surface study N°02 · raked light · rendered grain study

03Grain library

Three grinds, one harvest

The character of a panel is set at the mill. Coarser fragments read as terrazzo; finer dust reads as honed stone. All three grinds come from the same pits — only the grind changes.

Coarse grind

4 – 8 mm fragments · terrazzo read

Broad shards of shell held in a dark field. The boldest cut — made for feature walls and tabletops seen up close.

Classic grind

1 – 4 mm fragments · balanced read

The house grind: enough shard to declare the material, enough field to stay calm under objects and daylight.

Fine grind

0.5 – 1.5 mm fragments · stone read

Milled close to dust, the speckle tightens toward a quiet mineral field — the nearest read to honed natural stone.

Swatches above are rendered grain studies. The physical grinds in the sample kit will differ the way every natural batch differs — that variance is the point.

04Specifications

Material data

Olive Stone is in engineering validation. Figures marked as targets are design targets, not measured claims — measured values are published only once tested, and every sample kit states exactly which is which.

Panel thickness
12 / 20 / 30 mm

Calibrated formats for cladding, tops and furniture.

Panel format · target
Up to 2400 × 1200 mm

Full-slab target; smaller formats cut to order.

Recycled pit content · target
≥ 70 % by mass

Ground olive pits from regional presses; balance is binder.

Weight · target
Lighter than granite

Density target well below quarried stone, for easier handling and install.

Finishes
Honed · matte sealed · oiled

Sealed faces for wet and food-adjacent use are in validation.

Tooling
Standard shop tooling

Cuts, routs, drills and edge-profiles with stone and wood tooling.

Sourcing
Traceable to the press

Each batch records the presses that supplied its pits.

End of life
Designed for re-milling

Panels are designed to be reclaimed and reground as aggregate.

Test data — density, flexural strength, water absorption, wear and heat behaviour — will be published as an issued datasheet when certified results are in hand. We would rather hand you a smaller number that is true.

05Fabrication

It behaves like stone.
Work it like stone.

No new machinery, no exotic process. A fabricator who works quartz or hardwood already owns everything a panel of Olive Stone asks for.

  • Cutting

    Saw and CNC with standard stone or wood blades. Clean arrises, no chipping-prone crystalline structure to fight.

    Standard tooling

  • Edging

    Rout and profile edges as you would dense hardwood — eased, chamfered or full bullnose. The grain runs through the body, so the edge shows the same face as the top.

    Through-body grain

  • Joining

    Seams bond with standard surface adhesives, colour-matched to the binder field so the joint recedes into the speckle.

    Colour-matched seams

  • Finishing

    Honed as standard, then matte sealed or oiled on site. Sealing systems for wet and food-adjacent surfaces are in validation.

    Sealing in validation

  • Install

    The lower target weight against granite is aimed at two-person handling of full tops and simpler wall substructure. Handling guidance ships with the first project runs.

    Target: lighter than granite

06Formats

Four ways to specify it

Countertops

20 – 30 mm · sealed face · edge-profiled

Kitchen and bar surfaces with the visual weight of stone and a provenance the room can talk about. Food-adjacent sealing is in validation before first residential installs.

Enquire

Wall cladding

12 mm · large format · lighter than stone

Feature walls, reception backdrops and hospitality interiors. The lower target weight against granite is aimed at simpler substructure and faster fit-out.

Enquire

Tabletops

20 mm · cut to template · oiled or sealed

Café, restaurant and residential tables, cut to the maker's template. Furniture workshops work it with the tooling already on their benches.

Enquire

Bespoke

Custom format · custom grind · project runs

Hospitality and retail projects can commission their own grind — coarser shards, finer dust, a darker binder — and hold that recipe for the whole fit-out.

Enquire

07Circularity

Nothing is quarried.
Nothing is wasted.

Most "sustainable" surfaces are ordinary products with a certificate attached. Olive Stone is circular by construction: its raw material already exists, every season, as the by-product of an industry four thousand years old.

The pits we use would otherwise be burned as low-grade fuel or dumped. Diverting them into panels removes a disposal problem for the press, creates a second income for the mill, and keeps the material's whole life — grove, press, panel, and eventual re-milling — inside one region.

  • No quarry

    No blasting, no scarred hillside, no imported slab. The hillsides stay groves.

  • A seasonal supply chain

    Every press within an hour of Nablus is a potential supplier. Harvest is our logistics calendar.

  • Traceable to the batch

    Each production batch records which presses supplied its pits — provenance a spec sheet can cite.

  • Designed for a second life

    End-of-life panels are designed to be reclaimed and reground as aggregate for new ones.

Published only when true — named, with permission, from the first production run

—
Presses supplying pits
—
Square metres produced
—
Projects specifying

Olive Stone is pre-production. This scoreboard stays empty until it can be checked, and we think an empty scoreboard beats an invented one.

For olive presses

Your pit heap is our supply chain

If you run a press within reach of Nablus, the pits you pay to get rid of are the raw material we buy. Collection is arranged around your season, weighed at your gate, and recorded against the batches your pits become.

Talk to us about supply

Harvest-season collection · weighed at the gate

08Straight answers

What architects ask us

Is it actually stone?
No — and we never call it that on a spec sheet. It is an engineered composite of ground olive pits and binder that machines, installs and reads like stone. "Stone" is what it replaces, not what it is.
Can I specify it for a kitchen today?
Not yet for wet and food-adjacent surfaces — the sealing system for those uses is still in validation, and we say so on every sample card. Cladding, tabletops and dry decorative surfaces are where the first project runs begin.
Will two panels match?
They will belong to each other, not mirror each other. Grind and colour range are controlled per batch; the exact placement of every fragment is set by the press of the mould. Order a project run from one batch when consistency matters.
Where is the test data?
In progress, and unpublished until certified. Density, flexural strength, water absorption, wear and heat behaviour will ship as an issued datasheet — we would rather be late with a true number than early with a hopeful one.
Does it smell of olives?
No. The pits are cleaned of pomace and oil residue before milling; the cured panel is odour-neutral. The grove is in the grain, not in the air.

09Notes from the mill

Work in progress, in public

We publish the unglamorous middle of materials development as it happens — what worked, what cracked, and what we changed. No press releases, just notes.

MillingNote 01

Finding the grind

Early trials taught us that a single fragment size reads flat. The depth people respond to comes from a graded mix — visible shards suspended in fines — so grading the grind became a first-class spec, not an afterthought.

BindingNote 02

The binder question

A circular aggregate deserves better than a careless matrix. We are weighing binder systems against workability, durability and end-of-life re-milling — and the recycled-content target holds through every candidate.

TestingNote 03

Earning the datasheet

Density, flexural strength, water absorption, wear and heat behaviour are being characterised before anything is claimed. When the datasheet ships, every number on it will have a test behind it.

10Studio

Made in Nablus

Olive Stone is a materials startup incubated at An-Najah National University · Innopark, Nablus — where the materials lab, the presses and the groves are all within an hour of one another.

We work with architects, interior designers and fabricators from first sketch to installed surface: sample kits, shop-drawing support, custom grinds for project runs, and straight answers about what the material has and has not yet been tested to do.

Incubated at An-Najah National University · Innopark, Nablus

For architects, designers & fabricators

Hold the grove in your hand

The sample kit is the argument: swatches across thicknesses and finishes, with an honest note on what is validated and what is still a target.

Order a sample kit

Surface study N°03 · full macro · rendered grain study