Once we've done the hard work of harvesting, deleafing and transporting the olives to the presser, it's now time to process the olives into oil.
The prepared fruit is washed and fed into the malixer (the pressing machine) where the flesh and the stone of the olive is crushed to a fine consistency and then pumped into the centrifugal press. It's in the centrifugal press where the oil is removed and the remaining mash is conveyed to an external silo for use as animal food.
The olive oil is now poured into clean dry fusti's - the stainless steel drums used to store and dispense olive oil - for storage. This will allow the fines in the oil to settle for later decanting and bottling.
Extra-virgin olive oil is made from pure, cold-pressed olives. This means that no heat was used to extract the oil from the olives. Adding heat to the olives might allow us to extract more oil from the olives, but it also destroys the flavour and aroma that our olive oil has.
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