OLIVOMUNDO, innovating to grow

On 15 December, a visit was made to the company OLIMUNDO, involving the COMPETE 2030 Steering Committee, the European Commission, as well as representatives from IAPMEI and the Alentejo 2030 Programme, with the aim of learning about the investment project supported by COMPETE 2030, which involved a total cost of €15 million and European funding of around €6 million.

Project review

Before visiting the factory, a review of the project was carried out, contextualised within the sector in which the company operates: olive oil production.

The project enabled the modernisation of the building and machinery, transforming it into a 4.0 factory. The company’s strategy is to continue to focus on product differentiation, ensuring its excellence.

OLIVOMUNDO is currently responsible for processing 7% to 8% of Portuguese olive oil, out of a total of 400 mills. With an average of 73% of the product exported, the doubling of storage capacity will result in an increase in this percentage.

The project has created jobs, is highly relevant to the region and has an environmental sustainability aspect.

The importance of COMPETE 2030

Alexandra Vilela, the president of COMPETE 2030, raised the issue of the relevance of the funds’ support for the investment in question. For the company, COMPETE 2030 enabled it to leverage investment, allowing it to achieve its objectives more efficiently, focusing on innovation, technology and excellence.

The European Commission emphasised the importance of knowing good examples of the use of European funds.

The Project

OLIVOMUNDO is a company dedicated to the production of olive oil.

The constant search for significant improvements in the production process and the quality of its product has enabled OLIVOMUNDO to become one of the largest Portuguese olive oil mills today, with a growing international presence.

The investment project supported by COMPETE 2030 has enabled OLIVOMUNDO to increase its production capacity and flexibility, improve quality, offer new products, and monitor and control the entire process remotely. By promoting energy efficiency, the use of renewable energy, and the recovery of process waste (pomace), it will promote sustainable economic growth.

The main objectives of the project were:

• To increase production capacity (scale) through new extraction lines and new warehouses, and to optimise the cost structure for greater efficiency;
• Increase production flexibility, making the production process more adaptable to the variability of raw material inflows;
• Increase the quality of the final product, with more extraction lines, allowing the olives to be processed in less time;
• Manufacture ‘new products’, lampante olive oil and semi-dry pomace, as a result of new equipment that will allow for 3rd and 4th extraction;
• Reduce water consumption by reusing wastewater from the process;
• Use technology that provides greater durability and resistance to machines, reducing downtime and maintenance requirements (with a positive impact on productivity levels and maintenance costs);
• Establish innovative and sustainable processes through automation, integration, digitisation and artificial intelligence, programming and remote control of the production process;
• Promote circularity (pits as biomass), decarbonisation (through the energy efficiency of the equipment to be installed), the use of renewable energy and the reuse of organic waste from the process (transforming waste into new products) and lower water consumption and reuse.