`Citoliva Opens Olive Oil 'Cooking Lab' in Jaén - Olive Oil Times
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Citoliva Opens Olive Oil 'Cooking Lab' in Jaén

By Naomi Tupper
Mar. 27, 2012 09:26 UTC


The Director General of Innovation and Competitiveness of the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, Maria Luisa Poncela Garcia (sec­ond from left), accom­pa­nied by President of CITOLIVA, José Juan Gaforio, inau­gu­rated the new Cookibg Lab at the Science and Technology Park Geolit​(Mengíbar, Jaén)

In a bid to fur­ther increase inno­va­tion and knowl­edge in the area of olive oil, Andalusian olive oil and tech­no­log­i­cal cen­ter, CITOLIVA, has opened the first cook­ing facil­ity in Spain solely ded­i­cated to olive oil.

The ​‘Cooking Lab’ was offi­cially opened on the 8th of March in the Geolit Science and Technology Park in Jaén , Spain, by CITOLIVA President José Juan Gaforio and direc­tor of inno­va­tion and com­pe­ti­tion at the Ministry of Economy and Competition, Mª Luisa García Poncela.

The pur­pose of the exper­i­men­tal kitchen is to develop and cre­ate healthy prod­ucts made with olive oil or its health-giv­ing com­po­nents. It will not only offer a ser­vice based on exper­i­men­ta­tion and devel­op­ment of new olive oil prod­ucts but also pro­duce recipes that form a part of the tra­di­tional Mediterranean diet while main­tain­ing the orig­i­nal nutri­tional prop­er­ties and fla­vors of the oil.

Gaforio said that the new facil­ity is ​“a lab­o­ra­tory of ideas, wills and tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment” and described it as an area of ​“co-cre­ation” rep­re­sent­ing the meet­ing point between sci­ence, tech­nol­ogy and gas­tron­omy with olive oil as the star.


José Juan Gaforio


The kitchen will ini­ti­ate projects that lead to eco­nomic growth and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment by pro­vid­ing tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tions to small and medium busi­nesses in the agri­cul­tural food indus­try. In the cur­rent poor eco­nomic cli­mate of Spain, it is hoped that the Cooking Lab will pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant sup­port for the econ­omy of Jaén and Andalusia, as well as guid­ance towards inno­va­tion and tech­no­log­i­cal advances in the sec­tor.

The kitchen aims to pro­mote coop­er­a­tion between com­pa­nies and bring enter­prises closer to research insti­tu­tions, in order to gen­er­ate more knowl­edge and more inno­v­a­tive prod­ucts. Mª Luisa García Poncela, who unveiled the plaque at the inau­gu­ra­tion of the kitchen, pointed out that adding value to tra­di­tional prod­ucts such as olive oil would help to dif­fer­en­ti­ate Spanish prod­ucts and ser­vices from the com­pe­ti­tion.

The University of Jaén also sup­ported the project, reit­er­at­ing its com­mit­ment to CITOLIVA, with Dean Manuel Parras Rosa insist­ing that the growth of the olive sec­tor relies mainly on research, inno­va­tion and the shar­ing of knowl­edge.

CITOLIVA has devel­oped strong knowl­edge base on the phys­i­cal and chem­i­cal nutri­tional char­ac­ter­is­tics of olive oil, as well as the behav­ior of valu­able com­po­nents of oils in the body. It has been rec­og­nized as a lead­ing con­trib­u­tor to the increase in inno­va­tion and devel­op­ment in Andalucía.


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