`A Plan to 'Relaunch' Umbrian EVOO - Olive Oil Times

A Plan to 'Relaunch' Umbrian EVOO

By Marco Marino
Dec. 16, 2014 09:24 UTC

On December 5, Fernanda Cecchini, Umbria Region Councilor for Agriculture, pre­sented a project for the relaunch of local extra vir­gin olive oil” dur­ing a meet­ing attended by stake­hold­ers includ­ing the University of Perugia, he Umbrian PDO EVOO Consortium and Umbrian Confindustria (the Umbrian indus­trial Association).

This project did not result from the dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances con­cern­ing oil pro­duc­tion in 2014, clos­ing with a seri­ous pro­duc­tion deficit in Umbria as well as in other Italian regions,” Cecchini explained, the project for the Umbrian olive oil sec­tor is part of the plan­ning pol­icy that we have car­ried out in the last years and that has pro­duced tools to sup­port our agri­cul­ture, such as the Umbrian Livestock Plan, the Wine Special Project and the new regional Act on agri-tourism.”

The project will have to iden­tify strengths and weak­nesses, evo­lu­tion­ary sce­nar­ios, strate­gic objec­tives as well as exec­u­tive inter­ven­tions to sup­port com­pet­i­tive­ness of the entire regional oil sup­ply chain,” Cecchini added.

As Cecchini noted, Umbria includes more than 30 thou­sand hectares of olive groves, con­tribut­ing less than 2 per­cent of the national oil pro­duc­tion, but it is head­quar­ters of the largest Italian oil pro­cess­ing com­pa­nies. Umbria is also the only region pre­sent­ing a sin­gle PDO cer­ti­fi­ca­tion divided into 5 sub-areas.

Cecchini said: We pro­duce a very high qual­ity oil, but we con­sider equally impor­tant the envi­ron­men­tal value: olive groves are a strong and essen­tial ele­ment of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of our region. Starting from the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, we want to iden­tify the most effec­tive actions for its devel­op­ment by help­ing good Umbrian oil have a solid and well-struc­tured pres­ence on national and inter­na­tional mar­kets.”

As its pri­or­i­ties, the project approved by the Regional gov­ern­ment includes the strength­en­ing of the oil sup­ply chain to reach higher qual­ity and higher prof­its through a bet­ter rela­tion­ship between pro­duc­ers and dis­trib­u­tors. At the same time, Cecchini high­lighted the need for a strong mar­ket­ing cam­paign.

The project will be financed by European, national and regional pro­grams, such as the Rural Development Program.


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