Activities in the factory begin with the reception of the raw material sent from the plantation, which is brought to the production plant in trailers especially designed for olive transportation. The olive fruit is tested in order to check its state before entering the production plant.
Oil quality depends on raw material quality.
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Olive Oil Production |
The olive fruit is placed in hoppers located in the reception yard of the factory. It is then taken to the machines on conveyor belts in order to be washed and de-stemmed. Before the process continues, the fruit goes through a metal detector in order to prevent a metal item from damaging the industrial equipment.
The production process is organized in two production lines with a daily 90-ton processing capacity each. The machinery used is from Germany. The extraction process consists of two phases.
Clean olives are placed in a scale for continuous weighing in order to send information to the system and monitor the kilograms of olive which are transferred to the production process, with the aim of measuring the industrial output. This scale sends olives to a hammer mill which transforms them into a paste. The fruit is not destoned; olives are fully grinded with drilled sieves until reaching a given dimension expressed in millimeters.
The olive paste is then fed into a thermomixer so as oil drops come together and become oil blobs which make extraction and separation of oily material possible. The olive paste spends approximately 45 minutes in the thermomixer. Then it is taken to a decanter, a horizontal centrifuge, which, based on Stoke’s law, separates the oil from the paste, generating two phases: oil and "alperujo" (grinded olive pulp). This oil passes through a vibrating filter which separates some remaining sediment or solid material, which was not filtered by the decanter.
The oil is then sent to the vertical centrifuge, which spins at 7000 revolutions per minute, in order to take emulsified water and finer solid material away. This automated process is programmed and monitored from a control panel.
The oil that is in the vertical centrifuge is sent to a primary decanter in order to facilitate deaeration. Before storing the oil, it goes through a flow meter, which restates oil liters in kilograms, due to the fact that liter measurements are altered when temperature varies, but kilogram measurements are not.
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Olive Oil Storage |
PROMAS storage facility has a capacity of 1,000 tons, distributed in thirty-six 28-ton tanks each. Oil is stored according to variety, maturity rate, quality, and origin. This is done so as to facilitate mixture of blends or "coupages" and the bottling of extra virgin and virgin olive oil.
The oil that is stored must undergo a 3-month residence period so that remaining emulsified water and fine solid material which were not filtered by the vertical centrifuge are removed from the conical tank bottom with special pumps. Blends are analyzed at PROMAS lab, where decisions on them are made.
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Oil bottling |
Following the period the oil spends in storage, it is divided and bottled. At the beginning of this process, 250- or 500-ml glass bottles are filled. Every day, 5000 units are filled and capped. Encapsulation, and bottle front- and back- labeling are automatic.
Once the product is labeled, encapsulated, and dated, it undergoes a control process, by means of which its perfect state is checked. After that, it is thermo-contracted in 6-unit packs which are then packed in cardboard boxes and palletized.
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