World's Largest Olive Oil Producer Pledges 'Higher Standards and Transparency'

Summary

Deoleo Italia has renewed its com­mit­ment to qual­ity and trans­parency after being fined for unfair busi­ness prac­tices regard­ing its olive oil brands, includ­ing Bertolli, Carapelli, and Sasso. The com­pany has imple­mented new qual­ity stan­dards and processes, includ­ing a Quality and Transparency Manifesto, to improve the qual­ity of its extra vir­gin olive oil prod­ucts and restore con­sumer trust.

After the judge­ment in June that imposed a fine of €300.000 for unfair busi­ness prac­tices regard­ing its olive oil brands Bertolli, Carapelli and Sasso, Deoleo Italia said it will renew a com­mit­ment to qual­ity and higher stan­dards.

“We take note of the Italian Antitrust Authority deci­sion that took into con­sid­er­a­tion the company’s new, upgraded qual­ity stan­dards and processes,” the world’s largest olive oil pro­ducer said in a state­ment. ​“Moreover, we con­firm our com­mit­ment to work col­lab­o­ra­tively and trans­par­ently with the Italian author­i­ties.”

The pledge is now pre­sented on a ded­i­cated web­site and fol­lows an adver­tis­ing cam­paign in lead­ing Italian news­pa­pers, that declared that the maker of Bertolli, Carapelli, Sasso and Carbonell brands wanted to ​“renew the promise of qual­ity and trans­parency” to con­sumers.

Deoleo pointed out that its new man­age­ment team ​“is expressly focused on ele­vat­ing qual­ity and trans­parency stan­dards, above and beyond global indus­try stan­dards,” and is con­cur­rently ​“col­lab­o­rat­ing with the entire sec­tor to improve the pro­duc­tiv­ity of the Italian Olive Oil indus­try and Italian brands world­wide.”

It has devel­oped the Quality and Transparency Manifesto that estab­lishes ​“higher stan­dards” for all of its extra vir­gin prod­ucts through six com­mit­ment mea­sures:

• The selec­tion of the best olive oils (anchored in stricter pro­ce­dures for sup­pli­ers’ accred­i­ta­tion)
• More restric­tive phys­i­cal-chem­i­cal para­me­ters than those required under EU law
• Exclusive blend­ing of 100% extra vir­gin olive oils
• Utilization of dark green bot­tles to help safe­guard prod­uct qual­ity
• Improved labels with full details about prod­ucts
• Traceability for every bot­tle of extra-vir­gin olive oil

The com­pany said the first three mea­sures ​“refer to prod­uct qual­ity and raw mate­r­ial stan­dards already in place in its pro­duc­tion plants as of the end of 2015, while the last three mea­sures will be fully imple­mented for all Deoleo extra vir­gin olive oil prod­ucts by the end of 2016.”

The note referred to ​“inde­pen­dent experts,” which were recently employed by the com­pany to con­duct a com­pre­hen­sive assess­ment of inter­nal qual­ity processes, in order to ensure the higher stan­dards.

The com­pany said its qual­ity pro­ce­dures are among the most devel­oped in the olive oil indus­try and cover the entire prod­uct cycle from the selec­tion of raw mate­ri­als to the prod­ucts in stores.

Along with its renewed com­mit­ment, Deoleo announced the recent appoint­ment of Anna Cane as global qual­ity and devel­op­ment direc­tor and Giovanni Sacripante, the for­mer gen­eral man­ager at EXPO Milano 2015, as gen­eral man­ager at Deoleo Italia.

“Quality and con­sumer trust of our prod­ucts are what we value most,” the com­pany said. ​“These mea­sures are the cul­mi­na­tion of Deoleo’s unwa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to both the indus­try and con­sumers.”

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