Cleaning Olive Oil Containers

If we have a good olive harvest, we generally fill these 25-litre containers when we mill the oil. They are a bit of a pain to clean but I’ve found a good method to ensure that they are ready for next year.

  1. Use an outside hose to rinse out as much oil and sediment possible.
  2. Bring inside.
  3. Fill the kettle and bring to the boil.
  4. Meanwhile, fill the container to the 1st line with cold water and some washing-up liquid.
  5. Put on the lid and shake well.
  6. Clean the outside of the container with washing-up liquid and a sponge.
  7. Empty.
  8. Rinse with cold water.
  9. Fill the container to the 5th line with hot water.
  10. Put on the lid and shake well.
  11. Leave until the kettle is ready and then undo the lid and empty.
  12. Pour the boiling water into the container.
  13. Shake well.
  14. The container will expand with the steam, so gently release the pressure by undoing the lid, covering it with a dishcloth.
  15. You will need to release the pressure about 5 times, shaking the container thoroughly after each time.
  16. Undo the lid and empty.
  17. Completely fill the container with cold water. Empty and make sure that the water runs clear. Continue rinsing with cold water if it doesn’t.
  18. Fill the container with a small amount of cold water and add a minute amount of sodium meta-bisulphate to sterilise.
  19. Replace the lid and leave until needed.

Video of wrapping soap

Sarah has now become an expert soap maker and has gone into large scale soap production. We have been selling boxes of 6 soaps in Spain and also around Europe.
We have so far only sold soap to people we know.

We even have an Etsy and a Wish page.

Sarah invented and designed this system to wrap the soaps using a wooden template. 

See the other page about soap making here  https://cortijoblog.com/2020/06/20/soap-making/

Is our olive oil organic?

Nonnie Picking Olives

Nonnie Picking Olives

For people who can’t be bothered to read this page.  Just read this one line.
Is your olive oil organic? Yes, it is probably the most organic oil you will ever taste.

Why  our olive oil is not officially organic.

Products which are organic generally have a higher price because being organic has higher costs. We decided it would be a good idea to get organic certification so that we could sell our olive oil at a higher price. We paid our 160 euros for the first year to the certification entity. Around 5 months later the man who came to inspect the land came to visit us in a big gas guzzling Land Rover. He said it was not necessary to even look over our land. He said that he would never come unexpectedly to our farm, he would never jump over the fence to take a soil sample. He could give no advice about organic fertilizers and where to obtain certifies organic fertilizer. Basically as long I as I keep paying the fees I will get organic certification. 
To me this is a system open to fraud and the organic certification does not certify anything. If you buy organic produce you just have to trust the producer.  For this reason I gave up the idea of becoming certified as officially organic.

Why  our olive oil is actually organic

Our olive oil is actually super organic we are vastly more organic than most organic olive oil. Here are the reasons why: 

Non mechanical  picking. 

We pick olives by hand  there are no noisy petrol driven picking machines. 

Organic Fertilizers. 
We only use organically certified fertilizers based on animal manure. 

No Pesticides. 
We do not use any pesticide whatsoever.

Bee friendly meadow system. 
We don’t plough around the trees. In the spring the olive grove is ablaze with wild flowers which attract bees and butterflies and many insects. We do not use any weedkiller. 

No burning of prunings  

From time to time you may have to put up with a neighbour burning tree branches after fruit trees are pruned. This releases Co2 into the atmosphere and the smoke is a pollutant. Here we use a wood chipper which creates several tons of mulching material which we use on the vegetable garden.  Most of the carbon is incorporated into the soil. In addition to saving water, improving soil, combating pests and stopping weeds, wood mulch actually reduces the release of a nitrous oxide which is a  greenhouse gas 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
Several website explain the many advantages of mulching: Link 1 Link 2

Olive Oil FAQ


OLIVE OIL FAQ

Is oil made from green or black olives?
All green olives eventually go black. The olives in Spain are mostly green in mid November but by January almost all of them have turned black.

Is olive oil made from the stones or the flesh of the olives?
The oil in olives is concentrated in the flesh not in the stones. After milling, the stones are mostly intact. Stones do not make any distinctive contribution to the flavour of the oil and in some extraction techniques the stones are removed.

What is the difference between virgin and extra virgin olive oil?
Extra virgin olive oil is the highest quality and most expensive. Extra virgin olive oil must be extracted using only mechanical means without the addition of any solvents and with a temperature of less than 30C.

Extra virgin olive oil must have less than 0.8% free fatty acid because better oils have a low acidity. Each time an olive producer takes a load of olives to the mill, a random sample is taken and this is analysed in a laboratory. The acidity influences the amount that is paid for the olives.

Extra virgin olive oil must have a peroxide value of less than 20. The peroxide level is an indication of how much oxidation has happened, all oils oxidise but excessive oxidation results in rancid flavours.

In order for an oil to qualify as “extra virgin” the oil must also pass an official chemical test in a laboratory and has to be evaluated by a trained tasting panel recognized by the International Olive Council.

What is the basic process of olive oil extraction?
First the olives are ground up into a paste. This was traditionally done with 3 massive heavy conical stones which were dragged around in a circle by a donkey. One of the cooperatives where we take the olives uses a more old-fashioned technique (click here for more info).  Nowadays,  the olives are ground up using electric motors. Traditionally the olive oil paste was then spread out on circular mats which were stacked in a press and pressure applied to squeeze the oil out of the paste. Pressing the olive paste would now be considered an old-fashioned technique and nowadays most oil is extracted in centrifuge-based systems.

Can I use olive oil for frying?
Olive oil is versatile and can be used for roasting, sautéing, shallow frying, dressing and drizzling. Since it has a high smoking point (210ºC) which is higher than the ideal recommended frying temperature of 180ºC for most foods, it can also be used for deep-fat frying and many chefs recommend it.

 

Fullfilment by Amazon – Our experience

 

The aim of this blog post is to chart our experience of selling through Amazon by using their “Fulfilment by Amazon” programme.

Rather than representing a profitable, business venture, it was one long saga involving DELAYED DELIVERY, LOST STOCK, HIGH COMMISSIONS and DAMAGED GOODS. Below I will recount our experiences and provide advice and information about selling through Amazon.

SETTING UP AN ACCOUNT
The first step was to set up an account. You can either choose between a business (Professional Merchant) account or a personal (Individual) account. As we wanted to sell olive oil in the food/groceries category, it was necessary to set up a business account. The conditions were a 3-month free trial period followed by a monthly fee of £25 plus Amazon charges per item sent.

As this was an entirely new venture, we decided to take our olive oil with us to England and ship it to the Amazon Fulfilment Centre in Fife.

CREATING YOUR INVENTORY
The second step is to create your inventory. For this, you need photos of the products and it is important to consider Amazon specifications for your photos (no borders, no text, jpg/tif format, well lit, occupying 80% of image area, etc.). You then need to measure and weigh each individual item and each of the boxes to be shipped to Amazon.

For the inventory, you will also need a UPC/EAN barcode number for each product that can be used on Amazon. There are many websites which sell these. You then associate each product with its EAN number.

LABELLING YOUR PRODUCTS
Each product must be labelled before shipment with the correct barcode for tracking purposes within the Amazon fulfilment centre.

The Amazon dashboard is fairly self-explanatory and you can contact their support line at any time. They generally responded quickly either by phone or email.

SHIPPING YOUR PRODUCTS
Using the dashboard, you next need to create a shipping plan, specifying the number of boxes that you want to send. You can either to arrange collection by courier yourself or through Amazon. I arranged it through Amazon so they provide the labels to print for each box. The total price of the shipment for 7 boxes was £25 which was a lot lower than the quotes provided by the same company on their page. The only disadvantage is that Amazon is the shipper and so if something goes wrong they will only act if the parcel is lost or damaged. In my case, the shipment was due to arrive after 24 hours but in fact arrived 42 hours later. According to UPS terms, I should have been eligible for a refund but since Amazon wasn’t willing to fight my corner I wasn’t given one.

LOST STOCK
The next problem was that when the shipment finally did arrive Amazon lost one of the boxes which meant that 9 litres of extra virgin olive oil had gone missing. They apologised and said they would refund the money BUT it would mean that we would have to wait 60 days for them to do so. Taking into account that the trial period last 90 days, this was a substantial part of it. After 60 days, we received a reply from Amazon about the refund: they still hadn’t found the merchandise and would be refunding the total price per unit minus the Amazon fees. This would be acceptable if we were selling the goods on Amazon, but since we would eventually be removing them from the Amazon fulfilment centre, this meant that they had effectively devalued the lost items from £10 to £5.45

FEES
The dashboard provides an estimation of expected fees BUT I was surprised to see that when purchases were made the fees deducted were higher. There was no way of knowing beforehand how much you would be charged per sale as this was calculated according to weight, dimension, etc. In actual fact, what this meant was that Amazon took 45% of the total sale price.

CUSTOMER SERVICE:
Customer service is good and I would normally receive a reply within a couple of hours either by phone or email.

REMOVING UNSOLD MERCHANDISE:
At the end of the trial period, we decided to ship any unsold merchandise to an address in the UK. It is important to be aware that Amazon require 10-15 days for this. If your trial period began on 6th November, then you will start to be charged on the 6th of the month three months later. First create your removal order from a drop-down tab in the inventory section. Then the day before your trial period is due to end, change your account to a personal one. That way, you will still have access to your account and inventory but will not be charged.

REFUND FOR DAMAGED GOODS:
When the goods were returned, each of the 38 metals cans was severely damaged and dented.

It took a lot of fighting with Amazon to get them to reimburse me for the damaged goods. At first they wanted to refund me a paltry £4.50 per can which was what they reckoned the goods were worth based on market prices, etc. but after much arguing, they agreed to give me £5.45 per can which was what they had given me for the items they had lost at their fulfilment centre. Although this was better than their first offer, I was far from happy with the result as this meant that I had still had to pay them their commission of £4.55 per can for each of the damaged items. To add insult to injury, I had then had to fight to get the shipping fees refunded. I reminded them that when the shipment had been delayed, they had said they would only refund costs if the goods had been damaged, something that was clearly the case now. Eventually, they agreed to the refund. 

CONCLUSIONS
Selling on Amazon has not been a success for the following reasons:

1. Amazon charge excessive commissions on each item: by taking up 45% of the retail price to cover storage, postage, labelling, etc., profit margins are small.

2. Excessively long period of time to resolve the issue of lost items: in my opinion 60 days is too long

3. Unfair estimation of replacement value for items lost: when issuing refunds for lost items, Amazon subtracts their commission from the retail price as though the item had been sold on Amazon (even though no expenses such as storage, postage or labelling had been incurred)

4. Goods in the removal order were poorly and inadequately packaged: items were so severely damaged in transit that they were completely unsellable

5. Unfair estimation of replacement value for damaged items: again, when issuing refunds for damaged items, Amazon subtracts their commission from the retail price as though the item had been sold on Amazon