`DIY Olive Oil Production Could Be Coming to Your Kitchen - Olive Oil Times
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DIY Olive Oil Production Could Be Coming to Your Kitchen

By Daniel Dawson
Jun. 4, 2019 09:44 UTC

Two Andalusian entre­pre­neurs have cre­ated the first ​“house­hold appli­ance” that would allow con­sumers to pro­duce their own olive oil at home.

Luis Serrano and Rafael Ibáñez have already patented Olimaker and expect to begin sell­ing the device in 2020. The pair plan on man­u­fac­tur­ing between 15,000 and 30,000 units by then.

“Olimaker was born in an indus­trial ware­house three years ago,” Serrano said. ​“Although before reach­ing this final design, we made three pre­vi­ous pro­to­types, which con­tin­u­ously improved both func­tion­ally and in terms of size and ergonom­ics.”

Serrano likened Olimaker to an espresso machine, say­ing that con­sumers would be able to mill their own olives at home and cold extract oil within 30 min­utes. He and Ibáñez gave the first pub­lic demon­stra­tion of the device at Expoliva in Jaén.

The entire process will take place in a five-liter con­tainer, where up to 6.6 pounds of ground olives can be added into a com­part­ment at the top of the device. The ground olives will then go through the malax­a­tion, sep­a­ra­tion and fil­ter­ing processes, before olive oil can be taken from a com­part­ment at the bot­tom.

Details of how exactly the inter­nal milling process works have not yet been pro­vided. Serrano said that the device was expected to retail for €2,200 ($2,470) before tax.

Olimaker at Expoliva

However, the oil pro­duc­tion process is expected to be easy and clean. The left­over parts of the crushed olives can even be dis­posed of as biodegrad­able waste.

While one of the aims is for Olimaker to be avail­able for domes­tic use, its cre­ators also hope to develop indus­trial ver­sions as well.

Serrano said that pro­duc­ers could use Olimaker to sam­ple olives before they begin to har­vest in order to see the kind of qual­ity their oils will have.

“It is directed to the olive pro­ducer, who wants to know the fat yield of his or her olive and the qual­ity of the oil,” Serrano said. ​“Also to the oil indus­try, because it is ideal for eval­u­at­ing prod­uct sam­ples.”

“And of course it is intended for the par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­ual con­sumers,” he added. ​“Since it makes it pos­si­ble to make your own oils and incor­po­rate them into the kitchen.”

Serrano and Ibáñez also see Olimaker as a step­ping stone project that will open up an entirely new set of prod­ucts in the indus­try.

“In the future we want to make bags of olives already pre­pared to make blends and obtain extra vir­gin olive oils,” Serrano said. ​“These could even be enriched with new nutri­tional prop­er­ties that sur­prise the users. They would be like the Nespresso cof­fee cap­sules but in bags of olives.”

Serrano hinted that he and Ibáñez were already look­ing into ways to effec­tively vac­uum pack­age dried olives. He said that he expects to see these prod­ucts head­ing to super­mar­ket shelves some­time soon.



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