As soon as olives in the Mediterranean region have been harvested, from October to January, they are brought to the mill. A mill usually belongs to a cooperative and forms the agrarian focal point of a region. There, the olives are ground, pit and all, to a pulp, and the oil is centrifuged (or in the traditional way: pressed) out from that, together with the watery olive juice. The oil (from various different suppliers, and thus from different varieties of olives) is then brought to a central storage tank, and the residual 'olive cake' or presscake (also known as pomace; cf. Italian: Sansa and Spanish: Orujo ) is stored in a large chute. As for the sale of the oil, the mill serves the local inhabitants first, of course, but the majority is sold by the tankload and ends up at large international companies. These also take care of the remaining presscake, which can comprise as much as 8% oil that however can only be extracted by mechanical means. Many large companies actually charge the mills for the 'service' of hauling away the presscake! This pomace forms an inexpensive and welcome material for the refinery. After all, with the help of chemical agents they can fairly easily extract any remaining olive oil to the very last drop. Differences between cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil and refined olive oil:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
