By Yvonne Carne-Ross
Following a second visit with another group of UK ex-pats to the Rice Co-operative in Calasparra which was very much enjoyed by all; it was agreed to arrange a visit to the Olive co-operative here in Calasparra.
Today 13 people were taken round by Pedro and we watched a farmer deliver his collection on olives together with the leaves and some earth.
The first machine strips off the leaves from the branch and this is collected as animal feed for a farm. Then the olives are washed before being weighed and a ticket assigned to the farmer. From here they pass into an enormous Italian machine which heats water and pulverizes the whole olive flesh and olive stone included. From here it travels to a machine which extracts the stone and transfers the oil and water into another tank where the impurities are removed.
It certainly had the women wondering and the men pondering whether a kiss on that was palatable!
The oil is stored in enormous vats each holding up to €80,000 worth of oil which can be stored for up to 3 months; and often the process is accelerated by a smaller machine. It is then piped to the bottling area and any residue in the vat collected by another company and the sediment from here is mainly used for cosmetics and lip gloss/lipstick.
The olive stones are crushed to look like fine stones and these are used as fuel to heat the water used throughout the process in a boiler. All the way through the process, it is now energy efficient, and there is no longer a need to use propane gas to heat the water used in the cleaning process. There are no chemicals used at all throughout the process of extracting the oil, only water is used.
Wonderful to see all parts again are maximized and nothing wasted.
The production of organic oil has increased five fold in the last recent years with many of the local farmers and olive growers now producing without the use of any chemicals on their land.
All oil is batch tested by and outside laboratory to ensure quality control and thus traceable at each step of the processing from picking to final bottling; if the need arises.
If the grower wants to, he is able to collect his oil one hour after he has tipped his load into the hopper.
Once the harvest and production is complete the machines can be serviced and cleaned ready for next year. The Co-operative then switches to fruit harvests.
Rounded off with another excellent menu del dia at Mi Antonia in Calasparra.
