More Delicious Delicacies, Thanks to Tech

Our company must market our flow restriction device to artisan food makers as demand for artisan food continues to grow due to increased technology. The article, found at BusinessWeek.com, discusses how one area of artisan food that is being positively affected by technology is olive oil. The article also discusses how the olive oil industry is beginning to take off.

Technology is improving century-old processing techniques in a variety of artisan foods. One of the processes being affected most positively is the process of making olive oil. For years, mid size and family owned olive farms in Italy would use traditional presses to turn it's olive harvest, on average 20 to 30 tons per year, into 5,000 liters of oil. This process took a great deal of time. Also, after the olives were harvested, they sat in storage bins for up to eight days, which hurt the oil's quality and limited it's shelf life. Today, the same family farms have installed continuous presses, which crush the olives into paste, then separates the paste from residual water using a centrifuge, eventually extracting the oil. Olives now only need to be stored two days at most, while the quality and quantity of the oil produced is greater. Those same farms that were once producing 20 to 30 tons of olive oil every year are now producing five times that amount.

The higher quality has helped boost an already booming market for olive oil. Worldwide consumption has increased from 1.9 billion tons a decade ago, to 2.6 billion in 2002. Consumption in the United States alone has nearly doubled, from 104 million tons to 196 million tons in 2004. This would be a great industry for our company to crack as it continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Our company needs to market our technology towards these producers in an effort to have these farms buy our flow restriction device.