Mobile Milling Comes to Texas

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When it comes to the pro­duc­tion of authen­tic extra vir­gin olive oil, tim­ing is every­thing. Since high-qual­ity olive oil pro­duc­tion requires fast pro­cess­ing from the moment the fruit leaves the tree, it’s a race to the mill.

It takes approx­i­mately 100 lbs. of olives to make just one gal­lon of oil. For fledg­ing pro­ducer states like Texas, add the chal­lenge of trans­port­ing the olives to the mill, and com­mon, har­vest-time tem­per­a­tures that can reach north of 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and the require­ments for this finicky, heat intol­er­ant com­mod­ity can become insur­mount­able. The state cur­rently has just six brick-and-mor­tar mills.

Enter Texas Mobile Mill and its tricked-out, 45-foot trailer. The mill-on-wheels can be brought directly to the groves, pro­vid­ing farm­ers and pro­duc­ers with an on-site solu­tion to a very nar­row time­line.

The mobile mill uses only com­pres­sion and no heat, as pre­scribed by the guide­lines for pro­cess­ing EVOO, and it can process two tons of olives at a rate of 65 pounds per minute, yield­ing approx­i­mately 40 to 50 gal­lons of oil. By turns, it sorts, rinses, and crushes the olives into a paste. Then, while main­tain­ing a cool tem­per­a­ture, the mill uses a cen­trifuge to sep­a­rate the oil from the paste, and the oil is deposited into a ver­ti­cal decanter for final clar­i­fi­ca­tion and treat­ment. Here, all water is removed, result­ing in an extra vir­gin prod­uct to be bot­tled and sealed.

Powered by a gen­er­a­tor, the machine weighs nine tons and costs farm­ers $75 to $100 per hour for haul­ing, fuel, and labor. With parts designed and imported from Italy, the mobile mill was cus­tom-made in California, home to the only larger machine of this kind in the coun­try.