Andalusia Plans an Olive Oil Center in Jaén

The Andalusian regional gov­ern­ment and Fundación Patrimonio Comunal Olivarero have signed an agree­ment to cre­ate the Olive Oil Reference Center in Mengíbar, Jaén.

The ref­er­ence cen­ter with state-of-the-art tech­nol­ogy is esti­mated to cost €7.3 mil­lion.

The Andalusian Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Sustainable Development is keen to pro­mote the ref­er­ence cen­ter and cre­ate more oppor­tu­ni­ties in the olive sec­tor through these types of pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships.

Carmen Crespo, the regional agri­cul­ture min­is­ter, said the cen­ter would help Andalusia posi­tion itself as a glob­ally renowned bench­mark in food safety, qual­ity, trace­abil­ity and pro­duc­tion con­trol.

“We have to develop a ref­er­ence cen­ter that allows us not only to work on qual­ity and trace­abil­ity but also to ana­lyze costs and the evo­lu­tion of crops to know the sit­u­a­tion of the sec­tor,” Crespo said.

By set­ting up the ref­er­ence cen­ter, the regional gov­ern­ment intends to make the Mengíbar facil­ity a com­mu­nity and national point of ref­er­ence for con­trol­ling olive oil qual­ity.

Additionally, the cen­ter will pro­vide the Andalusian olive sec­tor with the knowl­edge and tech­nol­ogy to inves­ti­gate and ana­lyze the qual­ity of olive oils in the region and world­wide.

“Jaén has to be a ref­er­ence in the olive oil field,” Crespo said. ​“If we talk about qual­ity and oil, we have to talk unques­tion­ably about Jaén.”

She also recalled that the province of Jaén is famous for pro­duc­ing extra vir­gin olive oils pro­tected by three Protected Designations of Origin (PDO) and a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI).

“Our oblig­a­tion that of the sec­tor, of the Fundación Patrimonio Comunal Olivarero and of the Andalusian gov­ern­ment is to con­tribute what we can to the sec­tor and take more steps every day so that it has a promis­ing future,” she said.

Rafael Sánchez de Puerta, the pres­i­dent of the Fundación Patrimonio Comunal Olivarero, said that Andalusia is an undis­puted global leader in olive oil pro­duc­tion and mar­ket­ing, and the new research cen­ter would cement this.

“Now we have to work on the image and take the mes­sage to the whole world that talk­ing about olive oil is talk­ing about Spain, Andalusia and Jaén,” he con­cluded.

• Europa Press
• ABC Sevilla
• Agro Digital