Olive Harvesting

The olive fruit matures from the middle to the end of autumn, and this is when its harvest (liomazoma in Greek) begins. The olives are traditionally harvested by hand, and for centuries it has been a significant agricultural activity in many areas of the Mediterranean.

The beater, a tool which consists of combs, is used to detach the fruit from the branches with greater ease and speed, while the ground under the olive tree is covered with oli-net (liopana in Greek), a special net made of synthetic material. Ladders of wood or aluminum are used to harvest remote branches. After the olives fall from the tree, farmers flick the ends of the nets to create piles of the fruit, which are cleaned by hand from thick branches and bunches and then put in transport containers (buckets, cans, etc.) and sacks and are transferred to storage.

It is not necessary to remove the leaves, since in the mill there is special machinery that removes them with air. An alternative technique is the “shaking” of the olive tree with wooden sticks, but this technique can be applied only when the fruit is mature enough to be easily removed from the tree. Finally, it is customary during harvest to saw off selected branches, so as to facilitate the harvest and assist the proper development of the tree.

Extraction of olive oil

Firstly, the leaves are removed, the fruit is washed thoroughly in the laundry, and after that clean as it is goes to the crusher, where it is crushed. Afterwards, the olive gets ground under the traditional and unique in Zakynthos millstones, which are responsible for the sweet and refined taste of the oil. In this way, we keep the tradition and name our oil “the petrolitharo”.

We believe that the impact our oil has on the people makes us proud and this is because of two factors: Firstly the passion of our small family business, together with the latest facilities for olive oil extraction used to produce oil out of the most fresh and finest Koroneiko type olives of Zakynthos.

The latest technological acquisition of our olive oil mill, the Pieralisi Molinova kneaders which enable their fully automatic running through an electronic computerized control panel, allows us to customize the circumstances under which the paste will be kneaded. We can choose the kneading temperature , so as to achieve cold crushing with excellent results and without any loss of olive oil, to control the kneading time, the full automation of production, and of course all of these apply to each one of our clients.

After the kneaders, there is the Pieralisi DMF 8 decanter, which separates the oil from the core in a way that it keeps all its nutrients. This is also high-end technological equipment with high performance and capacity. Finally, the two Pieralisi separators separate the oil completely.

Olive oil packaging

In this way we proceeded to packaging. We use tin containers, plastic and glass bottles of various sizes. And the 250 ml glass bottle comes to different flavors.

AGROCERT Certification – Olive Oil Mill Extraction Bottling Tzavalas Zakynthos GreeceISO-22000 Certification – Olive Oil Mill Extraction Bottling Tzavalas Zakynthos GreeceFor all these reasons, we believe that if you try it once, you will never leave it out of your diet. Because we carefully monitor the whole process of olive oil production, and the product we offer comes only from our olive oil mill. With all the ISO 22000 certifications and AGROCERT, its quality has already been recognized abroad.

The olive oil mill is open to visitors throughout the year. We sell wholesale and retail, bottled and bulk.