`Olive Sector Key to Andalusian Circular Economy Plan - Olive Oil Times
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Olive Sector Key to Andalusian Circular Economy Plan

By Simon Roots
Apr. 29, 2025 13:59 UTC
Summary Summary

The Andalusian regional gov­ern­ment has pub­lished a new five-year plan focus­ing on cre­at­ing a cir­cu­lar agri-food econ­omy with a spe­cific empha­sis on the olive sec­tor, aim­ing to tran­si­tion the region’s agri-food sec­tor into a sus­tain­able, cir­cu­lar, and bio-based econ­omy. The plan includes ini­tia­tives such as the Oleacirc project, GASOLIVE, and the ORULAND project, which aim to improve envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­ity, reduce waste, and increase prof­itabil­ity in the olive indus­try, while also pro­mot­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion between olive oil pro­duc­ers and indus­trial enti­ties to shift towards a cir­cu­lar pro­duc­tion model.

The Andalusian regional gov­ern­ment has pub­lished its new five-year plan for cre­at­ing a cir­cu­lar agri-food econ­omy in which the olive sec­tor plays a piv­otal role.

The ​“Action Plan for the Circular Bioeconomy in the Agri-Food Value Chain 2025 – 2030” is intended to serve as a roadmap for tran­si­tion­ing Andalusia’s agri-food sec­tor into a sus­tain­able, cir­cu­lar and bio-based econ­omy. 

Grounded in European pol­icy and regional leg­isla­tive frame­works, it focuses on scal­ing bio­mass resource use, boost­ing rural economies and enhanc­ing food sys­tem sus­tain­abil­ity.

See Also:As U.S. Firms Back Off Climate Targets, Olive Oil Companies Stay the Course

“The Covid-19 pan­demic high­lighted the inter­de­pen­dence of global value chains and the need to accel­er­ate the tran­si­tion to a cleaner, more dig­i­tal and resilient eco­nomic and indus­trial model,” the Andalusian gov­ern­ment wrote. 

“The reper­cus­sions of the war in Ukraine on energy and food mar­kets have led the European Union to seek alter­na­tives and diver­sify its sources of sup­ply,” it added. ​“The tran­si­tion to cleaner energy, dri­ven by the need to com­bat cli­mate change and reduce depen­dence on fos­sil fuels, is also one of the ini­tia­tives led by the E.U., which trans­lates into encour­ag­ing invest­ment in green and sus­tain­able tech­nolo­gies.”

The plan places sig­nif­i­cant empha­sis on the olive sec­tor, rec­og­niz­ing its eco­nomic, cul­tural and envi­ron­men­tal impor­tance to the region. 

Integrating Strategic Objective 6 of the ​“Andalusian Strategy for the Olive Sector,” approved in February, the plan’s mea­sures include pro­mot­ing the ​“bio-based value chain” of olive prod­ucts, sup­port­ing projects that develop new uses for olive-derived residues, such as the Oleacirc project, and fos­ter­ing a cul­ture of sus­tain­abil­ity within the sec­tor.

The Oleacirc project focuses on the busi­ness devel­op­ment of suc­cess­ful ini­tia­tives in the field of olive byprod­uct exploita­tion. Its goal is to improve the sector’s envi­ron­men­tal and eco­nomic sus­tain­abil­ity by iden­ti­fy­ing fea­si­ble busi­ness mod­els and scal­ing up suc­cess­ful tech­ni­cal approaches.

Other projects sup­ported by the plan include GASOLIVE, which focuses on the poten­tial of gasi­fi­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies to con­vert olive residues into energy and organic fer­til­iz­ers, and the ORULAND project, which com­ple­ments it by aim­ing to reduce waste and emis­sions from olive oil pro­duc­tion processes.

All three projects aim to help olive pro­duc­ers com­ply with envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions while turn­ing waste streams into prof­itable resources. As gov­ern­ment-led ini­tia­tives, the results obtained will also be used to sup­port offi­cial deci­sion-mak­ing, both at the busi­ness and pol­icy imple­men­ta­tion lev­els, to improve the sus­tain­abil­ity of the Andalusian olive oil sec­tor.

One of the high­lighted objec­tives of the plan is to stim­u­late the olive sector’s over­all par­tic­i­pa­tion in the value chain. This involves facil­i­tat­ing col­lab­o­ra­tions between olive oil pro­duc­ers and indus­trial enti­ties that can process sub­prod­ucts into energy, fer­til­iz­ers or mate­ri­als. 

See Also:Researchers Transform Olive Grove Waste Into Bioplastic

This mea­sure is designed to shift the sec­tor from a lin­ear pro­duc­tion model to one in which waste becomes input, thus mul­ti­ply­ing the eco­nomic impact of the olive indus­try while reduc­ing its envi­ron­men­tal impact.

Another pri­or­ity is pro­mot­ing new projects that lever­age cir­cu­lar prac­tices. These include the devel­op­ment of new tech­nolo­gies for sep­a­rat­ing, pro­cess­ing and con­vert­ing olive waste into com­mer­cially viable prod­ucts. 

This is to be sup­ported by incen­tives for pilot ini­tia­tives, tech­no­log­i­cal adop­tion and the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of bio-based out­puts.

Incentivizing the adop­tion of more sus­tain­able prac­tices is seen as key to the plan’s suc­cess. ​“One of the mech­a­nisms is to take advan­tage of inno­va­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties and new oppor­tu­ni­ties for com­ple­men­tary sources of income,” the Andalusian gov­ern­ment wrote.

The plan also includes spe­cific com­mu­ni­ca­tion and pub­lic engage­ment mea­sures aimed at rais­ing aware­ness within the olive sec­tor about the oppor­tu­ni­ties of a cir­cu­lar bioe­con­omy. 

These mea­sures involve cre­at­ing tai­lored com­mu­ni­ca­tion strate­gies and edu­ca­tional mate­ri­als to encour­age par­tic­i­pa­tion, dis­sem­i­nat­ing suc­cess­ful case stud­ies and inte­grat­ing sus­tain­abil­ity into the sector’s cul­ture and busi­ness ethos.

The plan also pro­poses estab­lish­ing a regional plat­form to con­nect actors across the olive value chain and increase cohe­sion among pro­duc­ers, proces­sors, researchers, investors, and pol­i­cy­mak­ers. 

A large num­ber of gov­ern­ment depart­ments and work­ing groups are already for­mally linked in this regard. Still, the strat­egy aims to dra­mat­i­cally increase par­tic­i­pa­tion from the pri­vate sec­tor, as well as pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships.

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