As a daily consumption product in the Mediterranean area, olive oil and table olives production are important agro-alimentary branches in Europe. About 9.7 million tons of olives are grown annually from which approximately 1.9 million tons of olive oil are produced in approximately 12,000 olive mills, most of them SMEs. This means that the EU is the biggest world producer of olive oil in the world (80% of the total), and employs more than 800,000 people in Europe. In the case of table olives, the European Union is again the main producer (40-45%), with figures for the last campaigns of between 400.000-500.000 tons out of a world total production of 1.0-1.3 million tons (IOOC). This sector is integrated in the EU by about 600 companies. Due to its recognised beneficial health properties, olive oil and table olives consumption is expected to grow in all the world (the growth rate is estimated in 3.5-4% per year for both products, IOOC). From the production point of view, the optimised new plantations and irrigation technologies allow to match the increasing demand. However, the extremely polluting residues generated by both industries (more than 10 million tons from olive oil and about 1 million tons from table olives annually in Europe pose serious problems to the involved companies, especially in the case of SME ones. Indeed, faced with increasingly restrictive environmental legislations and the need to be competitive against other Mediterranean countries and new producers (for instance in Australia, USA or South America), many small and medium olive mills and table olives manufacturers could be forced to close in the next years due to their inability to treat properly their residues. Against this situation, the proposing IAGs intend to take an integrated and more proactive approach to the problem: the aim is to develop harmonised European environmental quality standards (EQS) for olive oil and table olives production and to facilitate the necessary support to their members for meeting them. These EQS will guarantee compliance with European regulation and will be used also as a marketing tool in front of olive oil and table olives from non-European countries. For this purpose, a label identifying the olive oil and table olives produced under the EQS will be developed and granted to the olive mills meeting them. The main impacts of the proposed project are: it will improve the environmental performance of olive mills, allowing them to comply with current and future legislation, it will improve the commercial image of the olive mills that decide to apply for the EQS, and will provide an added value to their products, and It will increase their general knowledge base, leading in turn to increased competitiveness.
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