In Greece, a Challenge for Olive Sector Innovators

The ​“Friends of Olive Oil” in Greece announced the Olive Challenge, the first ​“inno­va­tion and entre­pre­neur­ship com­pe­ti­tion” for the olive sec­tor last week at a press con­fer­ence in Athens.

Vaggelis Divaris, the pres­i­dent of the Olive Oil Scientific Society FILAIOS, said the point of the com­pe­ti­tion is to develop and upgrade the olive oil sec­tor through the intro­duc­tion of inno­va­tion, sus­tain­able devel­op­ment and sup­port for start-up com­pa­nies.

Olive Challenge, he said, ​“was designed to con­tribute to the cre­ation of new ser­vices and prod­ucts and enhance sus­tain­able entre­pre­neur­ship prac­tices in the sec­tor, by enhanc­ing the extro­ver­sion of olive oil and table olives and the growth of syn­er­gies and inter-sec­toral coop­er­a­tion.”

“Olive Challenge, is a con­test about inno­va­tion,” said Panagiotis Karantonis, deputy direc­tor of SEVITEL. ​“We believe, that this way we will assist the olives and olive oil sec­tor, as the con­test cov­ers all the stages from the fields to the shelves — and inno­va­tion will pro­vide the nec­es­sary boost for the prod­ucts of the indus­try.”

“We will moti­vate young entre­pre­neurs and start-ups to enter the mar­ket or improve their exist­ing busi­ness,” he added.

Some of the area the com­pe­ti­tion wel­comes ideas for are:

• New tech­nolo­gies imple­mented in the pri­mary, sec­ondary and ter­tiary sec­tor
• Green tech­nolo­gies
• Usage of new, envi­ron­men­tal-friendly prod­ucts
• The reduc­tion of car­bon foot­print in the cul­ti­va­tion, stan­dard­iza­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of olive-oil prod­ucts
• Reduction of energy con­sump­tion in one or more stages of the pro­duc­tion and mar­ket­ing of olive prod­ucts
• Total waste man­age­ment sys­tems
• Methods to track and con­trol loads
• Waste exploita­tion sys­tems
• The process of pro­duc­ing inno­v­a­tive final prod­ucts for the shelf

The appli­ca­tion for the con­test, as well its reg­u­la­tions, advi­sory com­mit­tee mem­bers and spon­sors, are posted online.

• FILAIOS — Olive Oil Scientific Society