Italy's Union of Olive Oil Producers Reelects Granieri

Unaprol's president, David Granieri, said he will continue working to revive the sector in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic.
By Ylenia Granitto
Jul. 16, 2020 09:09 UTC

The assem­bly of mem­bers of Unaprol, Italy’s union of olive oil pro­duc­ers, renewed the board of direc­tors and unan­i­mously reelected David Granieri as pres­i­dent at a meet­ing in Rome.

Unaprol brings together 56 pro­ducer orga­ni­za­tions. The renewal of the man­age­r­ial posi­tions of the group started in February with Nicola Di Noia’s direct appoint­ment as new direc­tor-gen­eral.

Alongside Coldiretti, we are propos­ing a pack­age of extra­or­di­nary mea­sures to assist agri­cul­tural com­pa­nies and mills.- David Granieri, pres­i­dent, Unaprol

I sin­cerely thank all the asso­ciates for their trust, espe­cially since today, more than ever, we need to work hard to relaunch the Italian olive sec­tor,” said Granieri, a 41-year-old agri­cul­tural entre­pre­neur, who has been in office since 2014 and is also cur­rently the vice-pres­i­dent of Coldiretti and pres­i­dent of Coldiretti Lazio.

According to Unaprol, the Covid-19 pan­demic has caused €2 bil­lion ($2.25 bil­lion) in losses to the Italian olive oil sec­tor, mostly due to the shut­down and dif­fi­cult restart for bars, restau­rants, and farm­houses.

The pan­demic also has cre­ated new obsta­cles for exporters, led to a sub­stan­tial drop in tourism and coin­cided with a 44 per­cent drop in prices, which is mostly attrib­uted to abun­dant global olive oil stocks.

In order to address these issues, we are call­ing for the acti­va­tion of inno­v­a­tive tools in favor of the sec­tor,” Granieri told Olive Oil Times. Alongside Coldiretti, we are propos­ing a pack­age of extra­or­di­nary mea­sures to assist agri­cul­tural com­pa­nies and mills.”

He said that pri­or­ity would be given to pro­duc­ers most at risk, with the imme­di­ate release of the resources already allo­cated for the enhance­ment of the olive oil sup­ply chain.”

Yet, we also need flex­i­bil­ity mech­a­nisms, mas­sive sup­port for exports and an extra­or­di­nary com­mu­ni­ca­tion plan on olive oil,” Granieri added. Moreover, we will work to teach con­sumers to rec­og­nize and choose qual­ity as well to sup­port the com­pa­nies that pur­sue it.”

Granieri stated that among the next objec­tives of the producer’s con­sor­tium is also the pro­posal for a revi­sion of olive oil clas­si­fi­ca­tions with stricter para­me­ters in order to assign the des­ig­na­tion extra vir­gin’ only to qual­ity pro­duc­tions.



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