Accademia Olearia Builds on Sardinia’s Heritage with Quality-Driven Growth

Summary

Accademia Olearia’s olive groves in Sardinia are man­aged sus­tain­ably and reflect the region’s her­itage, with a focus on pre­serv­ing the land­scape. The com­pany has a long his­tory of pro­duc­ing high-qual­ity olive oil, with a com­mit­ment to inno­va­tion and sus­tain­abil­ity, includ­ing organic pro­duc­tion and energy auton­omy through pho­to­voltaic sys­tems.

Accademia Olearia’s olive groves stretch across the north­west­ern tip of Sardinia, express­ing the island’s char­ac­ter through native Bosana, Semidana and Tonda di Cagliari trees. The company’s best-known oils are derived from these cul­ti­vars.

The orchards span diverse envi­ron­ments, from inland hills to the coast. Sustainably man­aged and shaped by a tra­di­tional low-den­sity lay­out, the groves reflect a long-term com­mit­ment to pre­serv­ing a liv­ing land­scape and the region’s olive farm­ing her­itage.

“We want our olive trees to be an inte­gral part of this ter­ri­tory, to which we feel deeply con­nected,” Antonello Fois told Olive Oil Times. ​“Our fam­ily has a long his­tory in the olive oil sec­tor in north­ern Sardinia, with the first estate estab­lished in 1827. The farm grad­u­ally spe­cial­ized in olive grow­ing, espe­cially thanks to our father’s fore­sight.”

In the late 1970s, Giuseppe Fois took over as CEO, and the com­pany mar­keted its oil through whole­sale chan­nels until 1999. Antonello joined the man­age­ment a year after his brother, Alessandro, as the com­pany shifted its focus to qual­ity in 2000.

“We decided to use the name Accademia Olearia because the idea of an acad­emy aligned most with our vision,” Fois said. ​“It went beyond a com­mer­cial ven­ture, tak­ing on the task of dis­sem­i­nat­ing and ele­vat­ing olive oil knowl­edge among con­sumers and food ser­vice pro­fes­sion­als.”

He cred­ited his father with plac­ing the next gen­er­a­tion at the cen­ter of the tran­si­tion from the start. ​“With courage, he imme­di­ately entrusted me and my brother with oper­a­tional respon­si­bil­i­ties,” Fois said. ​“In the begin­ning, when we needed man­power, we found our­selves doing every­thing that had to be done, from the grove to the mill. That gave us the chance to quickly under­stand every aspect and chal­lenge of the work.”

Fois recalled being encour­aged to focus on what could still be improved rather than rest­ing on past achieve­ments, and to pay atten­tion to the details that could ele­vate the com­pa­ny’s stan­dards. Working toward that goal, he said, deep­ened both broth­ers’ com­mit­ment to pro­duc­ing pre­mium extra vir­gin olive oil.

“We are oper­at­ing in a very dif­fer­ent con­text from back then, with clearly defined mar­ket seg­ments, at the top of which are pre­mium prod­ucts,” Fois said. ​“At that time, how­ever, espe­cially due to the lack of leg­is­la­tion on ori­gin labelling, the olive oil mar­ket was at the whim of imported mass-mar­ket prod­ucts.”

He said the com­pany chose to break away from those mech­a­nisms and pur­sue a path that could bring greater value and recog­ni­tion to its work, and to that of other pro­duc­ers. ​“Today, we are proud to have helped spark a qual­ity-dri­ven olive oil move­ment,” Fois added.

Two devel­op­ments proved deci­sive: the European Union’s recog­ni­tion of the Sardinia Protected Designation of Origin, which entered into force in 2008, and the intro­duc­tion of manda­tory ori­gin label­ing a year later. Together, the mile­stones became strate­gic levers that helped the com­pany strengthen its stand­ing, along­side broader momen­tum around pro­tected des­ig­na­tions of ori­gin.

“Our rep­u­ta­tion has grown also thanks to the suc­cesses we racked up at national and inter­na­tional com­pe­ti­tions, which helped us grad­u­ally lay the foun­da­tions for what the com­pany is today,” Fois said. ​“Our path con­tin­ues to be inspired by our father’s far­sighted vision.”

He said Giuseppe Fois died in 2021, after which their mother, Carmela, stepped into the company’s man­age­ment. ​“Following his exam­ple, we always work in close syn­ergy, mind­ful of our respon­si­bil­i­ties, while dis­cussing every­thing together, from the chal­lenges we face to the solu­tions we build,” Fois said.

Named in his honor, Gran Riserva Giuseppe Fois is rec­og­nized in the Official Guide to the World’s Best Olive Oils along with Riserva del Produttore DOP Sardegna and Accademia Olearia Bio DOP Sardegna. Their pro­files come from care­ful in-mill blend­ing of the estate’s olive vari­eties, sourced from dif­fer­ent areas of the prop­erty and used in vary­ing pro­por­tions.

The com­pany pro­duces a broad selec­tion of blends and mono­va­ri­etals from 350 hectares across the munic­i­pal­i­ties of Alghero, Sorso, Sennori, Sassari and Usini. With 35,000 trees cur­rently in pro­duc­tion, a fur­ther 6,000 will be planted this year, bring­ing the total to 40,000. Production is expand­ing, with plans to dou­ble out­put in the next few years.

The fruit is pressed at the estate’s milling facil­ity, which also pro­vides ser­vices for third par­ties. The com­pany pio­neered mod­ern milling tech­nol­ogy locally, installing a con­tin­u­ous-cycle sys­tem in the 1980s that has been con­tin­u­ally updated. Today, it oper­ates a Pieralisi line equipped with up-to-date machin­ery.

“Our milling plant rep­re­sents the pin­na­cle of extrac­tion tech­nol­ogy, and this allows us to pro­vide top-notch ser­vice to our cus­tomers as well,” Fois said. ​“Still, our pur­suit of high qual­ity can­not over­look respon­si­bil­ity toward the ter­ri­tory. That means leav­ing the area in which we oper­ate bet­ter than we found it.”

To pre­serve the land’s nat­ural beauty and envi­ron­men­tal bal­ance, he said the com­pany has cho­sen to main­tain tra­di­tional orchard lay­outs. Most groves on the estate retain a wide spac­ing of 10 by 10 meters, while newer plant­i­ngs fol­low estab­lished pat­terns of 6 by 5 and 6 by 6 meters.

“We want even the new olive trees to become an inte­gral part of the local her­itage and endure for cen­turies,” Fois said. ​“For this rea­son, we are com­mit­ted to keep­ing this envi­ron­ment healthy.”

He added that the estate fol­lows the prin­ci­ples of organic olive oil pro­duc­tion, fer­til­iz­ing the soil with com­post and live­stock residues not only in cer­ti­fied groves but also in areas man­aged under inte­grated farm­ing. ​“We are the first con­sumers of our prod­ucts and there­fore our most demand­ing crit­ics,” he said.

As part of the company’s sus­tain­abil­ity strat­egy, the facil­i­ties are pow­ered by pho­to­voltaic sys­tems equipped with stor­age bat­ter­ies, which the com­pany said pro­vide com­plete energy auton­omy for the estate.

Milling byprod­ucts are col­lected and reused, with pits gath­ered for heat­ing and humid pomace des­tined for bio­gas pro­duc­tion.

“These oper­a­tions do not rep­re­sent a cost but rather an oppor­tu­nity for our com­pany,” Fois said. ​“I believe that sus­tain­abil­ity begins with a mind­set. For us, it means doing our part to improve the world. If we start from that premise, we can truly imple­ment actions that gen­er­ate real sus­tain­abil­ity. This is the only path to fol­low if we want to be not only food pro­duc­ers but also stew­ards of this ter­ri­tory.”