`Sustainable, Low-Cost Process Turns Olive Pomace Into Nutrient-Rich Sheep Feed - Olive Oil Times
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Sustainable, Low-Cost Process Turns Olive Pomace Into Nutrient-Rich Sheep Feed

By Ylenia Granitto
Feb. 23, 2026 17:47 UTC
Summary Summary

Olive pomace and brew­er’s grain can be com­bined to cre­ate a nutri­ent-rich live­stock feed through a cost-effec­tive process devel­oped by the Sans3bbie project in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the University of Pisa and Azienda Agricola Spinelli. The result­ing ensiled feed is well-bal­anced, highly digestible, and palat­able for ani­mals, offer­ing a sus­tain­able and eco­nom­i­cal alter­na­tive to con­ven­tional feed options for small- and medium-scale farms.

Olive pomace com­bined with brewer’s grain can be trans­formed into a nutri­ent-rich live­stock feed through an acces­si­ble, rapid and cost-effec­tive process that relies on the com­ple­men­tary prop­er­ties of the two byprod­ucts.

A key advan­tage is that these byprod­ucts can be either gen­er­ated in-house or sourced from neigh­bor­ing farms, help­ing off­set both logis­ti­cal and feed costs for all the pro­duc­ers involved.- Stefano Spinelli, La Dispensa

The cir­cu­lar approach was devel­oped through the Sans3bbie project, funded by the Tuscany Region and car­ried out with the University of Pisa and the mul­ti­func­tional farm Azienda Agricola Spinelli – La Dispensa in Lamporecchio.

Within the European Union-funded Thematic European Rural Bioeconomy Network project, the non-profit orga­ni­za­tion Deafal and the Agency for the Promotion of European Research (APRE) pre­sented the method as a good prac­tice for small- and medium-scale farms.

Sheep grazing in the olive grove at Azienda Agricola Spinelli — La Dispensa in Lamporecchio, in the province of Pistoia.

“One of the key aspects of this project is the pos­si­bil­ity to use and val­orize locally avail­able byprod­ucts,” said Paola Cassiano, a train­ing and dis­sem­i­na­tion offi­cer in thERBN’s Italian work­ing group on cir­cu­lar bioe­con­omy, which also includes Laura Silici, Maurizia Castellari, Flavia Fusconi and Susanna Debenedetti.

“We iden­ti­fied a strat­egy con­sist­ing of an inte­grated co-ensil­ing process that lever­ages the prop­er­ties of the grains to reg­u­late the mois­ture con­tent of the pomace and pro­mote sta­ble fer­men­ta­tion,” Cassiano said. ​“This process yields a pre­served mixed silage with bal­anced mois­ture con­tent and com­ple­men­tary nutri­tional prop­er­ties. The inno­va­tion lies not in the inven­tion of a new tech­nol­ogy, but in the intel­li­gent and inte­grated use of already known prac­tices applied to these bio­masses, which are usu­ally treated dif­fer­ently.”

Composed of olive pulp and pit frag­ments, olive pomace is a residue of olive oil pro­duc­tion that requires proper dis­posal. Brewer’s grains are a solid residue of beer pro­duc­tion, with annual out­put in Italy reach­ing about 320,000 tons. Both byprod­ucts require costly han­dling, trans­porta­tion and stor­age, with high sea­son­al­ity and short shelf life com­pound­ing the chal­lenge.

“The idea of com­bin­ing olive pomace and brewer’s grains, which are already used indi­vid­u­ally as low-nutri­ent feed, stems from a very con­crete logic of com­ple­men­tar­ity,” Cassiano said. ​“Pomace is an abun­dant byprod­uct but dif­fi­cult to man­age due to its high mois­ture con­tent and sea­son­al­ity; brewer’s grains, on the other hand, have good absorbency and nutri­tional prop­er­ties that com­ple­ment those of pomace. The result­ing ensiled feed can be eas­ily incor­po­rated into sheep rations with­out alter­ing pro­duc­tion per­for­mance.”

The sys­tem begins with a sim­ple pre-treat­ment of both byprod­ucts before ensil­ing. Olive pomace is sep­a­rated from the pits, which are recov­ered and reused as bio­mass for heat and energy pro­duc­tion.

Brewer’s grains are dried to pre­vent unwanted fer­men­ta­tion, extend shelf life and sim­plify stor­age and trans­porta­tion. A por­tion of the dried grains can also be used as an energy source.

The two com­po­nents are then mixed and ensiled. A portable con­crete mixer, not tra­di­tion­ally used for ensil­ing, can be adapted as a low-cost mix­ing device.

Mixed and ensiled, olive pomace and brewer’s grains produce a feed that can be incorporated into sheep rations, providing fiber, bioactive compounds, protein and readily available energy. (Photo: Sans3bbie project)

During this phase, the grains act as an absorbent sub­strate, pro­mot­ing lac­tic fer­men­ta­tion and help­ing reg­u­late the silage’s over­all mois­ture con­tent.

Trials con­ducted by the work­ing group found the result­ing feed had a bal­anced nutri­tional pro­file and high digestibil­ity. It was also palat­able and well accepted by ani­mals, with no neg­a­tive effects on milk qual­ity or sheep growth com­pared with con­ven­tional feed.

Nutritionally, pomace pro­vides fiber and bioac­tive com­pounds, while grains sup­ply pro­tein and read­ily avail­able energy.

“This solu­tion has a low eco­nomic and envi­ron­men­tal impact,” said Stefano Spinelli of La Dispensa, who col­lab­o­rated on the project and is now using the feed for his sheep. ​“We have obtained a well-bal­anced feed that pro­vides valu­able nutri­ents, which are then passed on to the cheese we pro­duce from their milk.”

Spinelli said he inte­grates the feed with molasses, whey from cheese­mak­ing, bran, mid­dlings and mixed cereal residues.

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“This type of feed is par­tic­u­larly suited to sheep because they are effi­cient at digest­ing fibrous matri­ces and, espe­cially in Mediterranean sys­tems, are already accus­tomed to the use of uncon­ven­tional ingre­di­ents,” Cassiano said.

She added that a key fea­ture of the process is replic­a­bil­ity. Designed for small- and medium-scale farms, it is com­pat­i­ble with exist­ing silage facil­i­ties at the farm or coop­er­a­tive level and does not require com­plex or large-scale equip­ment.

“A key advan­tage is that these byprod­ucts can be either gen­er­ated in-house or sourced from neigh­bor­ing farms, help­ing off­set both logis­ti­cal and feed costs for all the pro­duc­ers involved,” Spinelli noted.

Reducing feed costs is one of the most sig­nif­i­cant out­comes. Preliminary data show that intro­duc­ing the mixed silage into sheep rations at 25 to 30 per­cent, along­side other feeds, results in an aver­age cost reduc­tion of about 27 per­cent.

The eco­log­i­cal foot­print is also reduced thanks to lim­ited logis­tics and because ensiled pomace has a lower envi­ron­men­tal impact than con­ven­tional lipid and fiber con­cen­trates such as corn and soy, which also com­pete with human nutri­tion.

A group of pro­duc­ers in the Lazio region has recently joined the effort, adopt­ing the ensil­ing process. A Tuscan region-funded fol­low-up pro­gram, BY-LAGE, was recently approved to expand tri­als and strengthen inte­gra­tion with local sup­ply chains, includ­ing halal meat pro­duc­tion.

“This approach, which turns two crit­i­cal waste man­age­ment issues into pro­duc­tive and sus­tain­able inputs, fits into some clear trends,” Cassiano said. ​“On the one hand, the olive sec­tor pro­duces large quan­ti­ties of con­cen­trated byprod­ucts at a spe­cific time of the year; on the other hand, in the live­stock sec­tor, there is grow­ing inter­est in the use of byprod­ucts as alter­na­tives to com­mer­cial feed, both to reduce costs and to lessen depen­dence on raw mate­ri­als such as corn and soy.”

“The Sans3bbie project shows that these issues can be addressed with prac­ti­cal, local­ized and tech­ni­cally sim­ple solu­tions,” she added. ​“The pri­mary value of this expe­ri­ence is demon­strat­ing that the cir­cu­lar bioe­con­omy can be suc­cess­fully imple­mented even on a small scale when solu­tions are designed in con­sid­er­a­tion of the real con­straints of farms and the local con­text.”

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