Italy's Union of Olive Oil Producers Reelects Granieri

The assem­bly of mem­bers of Unaprol, Italy’s union of olive oil pro­duc­ers, renewed the board of direc­tors and unan­i­mously reelected David Granieri as pres­i­dent at a meet­ing in Rome.

Unaprol brings together 56 pro­ducer orga­ni­za­tions. The renewal of the man­age­r­ial posi­tions of the group started in February with Nicola Di Noia’s direct appoint­ment as new direc­tor-gen­eral.

“I sin­cerely thank all the asso­ciates for their trust, espe­cially since today, more than ever, we need to work hard to relaunch the Italian olive sec­tor,” said Granieri, a 41-year-old agri­cul­tural entre­pre­neur, who has been in office since 2014 and is also cur­rently the vice-pres­i­dent of Coldiretti and pres­i­dent of Coldiretti Lazio.

According to Unaprol, the Covid-19 pan­demic has caused €2 bil­lion ($2.25 bil­lion) in losses to the Italian olive oil sec­tor, mostly due to the shut­down and dif­fi­cult restart for bars, restau­rants, and farm­houses.

The pan­demic also has cre­ated new obsta­cles for exporters, led to a sub­stan­tial drop in tourism and coin­cided with a 44 per­cent drop in prices, which is mostly attrib­uted to abun­dant global olive oil stocks.

“In order to address these issues, we are call­ing for the acti­va­tion of inno­v­a­tive tools in favor of the sec­tor,” Granieri told Olive Oil Times. ​“Alongside Coldiretti, we are propos­ing a pack­age of extra­or­di­nary mea­sures to assist agri­cul­tural com­pa­nies and mills.”

He said that pri­or­ity would be given to pro­duc­ers most at risk, ​“with the imme­di­ate release of the resources already allo­cated for the enhance­ment of the olive oil sup­ply chain.”

“Yet, we also need flex­i­bil­ity mech­a­nisms, mas­sive sup­port for exports and an extra­or­di­nary com­mu­ni­ca­tion plan on olive oil,” Granieri added. ​“Moreover, we will work to teach con­sumers to rec­og­nize and choose qual­ity as well to sup­port the com­pa­nies that pur­sue it.”

Granieri stated that among the next objec­tives of the producer’s con­sor­tium is also the pro­posal for a revi­sion of olive oil clas­si­fi­ca­tions with stricter para­me­ters in order to assign the des­ig­na­tion ​‘extra vir­gin’ only to qual­ity pro­duc­tions.

• Unaprol