Our olive ready to be processed and made into olive oil
Empty crates outside Oleificio R&B, Castelbuono
Our olives — our second haul — are placed in a crate to get weighed before being dumped into the olive processing system at Oleificio R&B. Today, most olives are processed using modern technologies and olive mills are partially or fully automated. The olives will be gently crushed into a paste. To obtain extra virgin olive oil, it is important to not exceed 27˚C at any step in the processing of the oil. The olives will go through a complicated step-by-step process of getting washed before undergoing malaxation, the critical stage of turning olives into an oily paste. Then the oil is extracted from the paste in vats before being pumped into decanters
A worker uses a shovel to handle olive paste that has gone through the malaxation proces
At the entrance to the Oleificio R&B, Castelbuon
Francesco Raimondo, one of the mill’s owners, uses a jack to lift our crate of olives and place it on the scale.
Luciano Biundo, an owner of the mill, watches olive oil at the end of the milling process
Golden olive oil
pressed olive oil in containers get weighed before they are taken away
A photo of the recently deceased Vincenzo Raimondo, the father of Francesco Raimondo, on the wall inside the mill. He helped found the olive mill
A machine that is part of the malaxation process
A photograph on the wall of the mill showing trees full of olives.
