How we helped Olio Bardi gain
full control of their production process
THE PROOF
Hi, I'm Andrea of OLIO BARDI company. We discovered Officine Meccaniche Toscane in the early 2000s, and since then, we've been hooked on their services for our extra virgin olive oil production. At the beginning, the quantities of olives we harvested didn't allow us to have our own mill, so we were forced to rely on third-parties mills. We tried several mills before finding the perfect one, not for our company, but for our customers, who were used to the high-quality BARDI product. The main problem was that we couldn't produce an olive oil both balanced and highly aromatic. Fortunately, after a few years, our volumes increased significantly, and we decided to purchase an olive oil mill from Officine Meccaniche Toscane. This choice allowed us to process the olives in the best way and, above all, to obtain much more qualitatively homogeneous batches of olive oil. The key to this processing was the elimination of third-parties contamination, which was inevitable in an external mill. Obviously, to find the right balance for our production and for the performance of the system, we made chenges and conducted studies together with OMT technicians and engineers. Now we can say that our system is perfect! We have been extracting olive oil with OMT equipment for over eight years and the feedback from our customers is excellent. Did I make the right choice? Today I am more than convinced.
INITIAL SET-UP AND NEEDS
Olio Bardi is a producer of quality extra virgin olive oil that relied on third-parties mills for its production. The outsourcing of the production process is a solution for many olive oil producers and, even if widespread, it presents some challenges. Olio Bardi approached us with some fundamental needs: – The compliance with milling deadlines: mills could not always guarantee the milling immediately after the harvest; – Guarantee of product consistency; – Production autonomy for a greater control on quality and timing.
THE PROJECT
The task we were given was to design and customize a system to make Olio Bardi independent from a production point of view, allowing olives to be pressed immediately after the harvest without waiting at the mill, scheduling the harvested quantities of olives and the following processing and ensuring a homogeneous extraction without any contamination. Considering the available space, the defoliation, washing and crushing phases were designed outside the mill building to ensure a greater hygiene during the process and less noise pollution within the room used for malaxation and extraction phases. Since this is a mill that does not work for third parties, it was designed with three malaxation bins of the maximum capacity. A decanter with an hourly capacity of 1,5 tons per hour was chosen for the extraction.This decanter ensures an hourly production to immediately process the olives harvested during the day and it also allows Olio Bardi to turn their own olives into an excellent extra virgin olive oil.
THE RESULTS
The customer has now the full control on the production process and the means to modify its variables according to their needs. They no longer need to rely on an external olive oil mill and they became completely independent from a production point of view.
