The European Union (EU) is funding a project to help olive producers reduce waste costs and compete with producers outside Europe who operate under less stringent environmental conditions.
The project has been driven by concerns that tougher EU environmental regulations are forcing up costs in the olive oil industry disadvantaging it against processors operating under less stringent conditions outside the bloc.
Its aim is to integrate European environmental quality standards (EQS) into olive oil and table olives production in a cost effective way. The project to reduce cost and waste is known as the Integrated Approach to Sustainable Olive Oil and Table Olive Product (NASOOP).
Being the world’s largest producer of olives and olive oil – Spain, Italy and Greece alone account for 80% of total world production-the EU also produces about 10 million tonnes of residues each year, which cause soil pollution and other problems.
The project brought together mill associations, processors, producers and researchers to create a set of industry standards aimed at helping most of the 12,000 olive producers in the EU which are small and medium enterprises (SME).
Project organisers claim that SME, are struggling to cope with environmental regulations and say that guidelines being developed are based on a project that studied the industry’s operations.
The study was led by Bremerhaven Techology-Transfer- Centre which examined the processing in different countries in an effort to learn best practices.
The project’s next task is addressing the industry’s environmental issues, including reducing energy and water use during processing and introducing new technologies.
