An Italian olive plant manufacturer has developed a processor to specifically handle olives grown in very dry environments which require ongoing irrigation and produce a fruit with a higher water content.
The company says the decanter was developed to suit the requirements of startup markets such as Australia, Argentina, United States, Chile and Tunisia whose plantations grow in an arid region and require continuous irrigation.
The new decanter, Taurus, represents the latest innovation by Amenduni Nicola Spa, the Italian manufacturer of olive oil extraction plants whose growth in the past 10 years has seen it become a major world player in the sector.
Company representative Michele Stillavati says continuous research and technological evolution enabled them to spot innovative solutions to the needs of olive oil producers.
“Our main target is to develop and increase competitiveness for our customers who are sensitive to the needs, trends and transitions regarding the olive oil market,” he said.
“The company designed a new technological solution to respond to startup countries and capable of extending the exclusive performances of our machines, whose success is already popular all over the world, to growers of new plantations characterised by high humidity rate of the fruit.”
He says the solution adopted also embraced different fields such as the process of de-stoned paste and pomace, allowing the achievement of excellent results.
He says Amenduni’s New Series 902 Taurus of decanters can process olives harvested within one hour and with moisture content over 70%, a much higher value compared with the 50% of traditional countries such as Italy, Spain and
Greece.
“A 70% humidity rate results from the necessity to irrigate continuously, during the year, due to the location in arid, rainless and almost deserted regions,” Stillavati explains.
“Normally such a high moisture content fruit is hardly handled by traditional decanters.
“The separation is problematic due to the minimum specific weight difference between olive oil and solid phase which is rich in water.
“Therefore we adopted special technologies to develop a decanter to solve that problem and which is capable of processing in that thin difference of weight and separate the clean olive oil.”
Stillavati points out that the results achieved with the new decanter are excellent for two main reasons; the excellent separation and the high production capacity achieved keeping an exclusive extraction efficiency.
“In traditional centrifuges due to the improper separation, a mixture of oil, water and solid part is coming out from the decanter and affecting both productivity and efficiency of the vertical separator.
“The result is a drastic decrease of the system’s overall efficiency. Our new decanter allows high quality oil without a drop in production – which would have to be an important factor for startup countries.”
