PROJECT
The OL – project has been developed by a master student of the University of Maastricht within the framework of a research project.
The aim is to develop a concept that can guarantee complete transparency and security in the food industry. Each consumer should be able to get all information available for the food products he/she buys. Complete transparency in the food industry is an important requirement to guarantee best quality and above all security in a globalized world. With the OL – project we start one of hopefully several campaigns in the food industry to further quality, security and authenticity. This year we produce a world class olive oil with fruity green olives from the Montalbano-region, which traditionally are picked by hand and processed into our tempting olive oil. Within the research project the reasons for the significant differences in quality of extra virgin olive oils have been investigated. Of course we do not intend to keep the results from our survey and therefore show you how to produce olive oil of best quality. In the production section we disclose each production step in our value-added chain.
In numerous interviews with operators of olive mills, farmers, laboratories and certification authorities it became apparent that there are major differences between extra virgin olive oils. We think that most of the extra virgin olive oils that you can buy in supermarkets at a bargain price do not meet the requirements of excellence for native extra olive oils. It is virtually impossible to produce an excellent extra virgin olive oil at low cost. The time-consuming harvesting by hand under all weather conditions and the highly complex extraction process underline this fact. The production of one liter of olive oil alone takes several hours of different steps in the value-added chain. How can farmers and producers be payed adequately when you can buy Olive oil for less than 5 Euros?
The OL – project intends to point out the enormous differences in quality of the category native extra and the difficult production conditions in the olive oil industry. Therefore we will produce one of the best extra virgin olive oils this year consisting exclusively of Tuscan olives. Furthermore we would like to support all farmers and producers that belong to the few farmers worldwide that still produce excellent olive oil und suffer from the high pressure of consumers that demand very low prices.
Support us and our efforts to increase transparency in food supply chains by pre-ordering OL now.