Evaluation of Production Process and Capacity Utilization of Olive Oil Mills in Turkey

Abstract

In this study, a survey and data assessment has been made to clarify the status of olive oil mills which operate in Turkey. According to the study, there have been around 1000 commercial olive oil mills that mostly small and medium-sized and about 1 million tons of olives at these mills have been processed in our country seasonally and total maximum capacity of the olive oil mills was estimated to be about 5 million tons of olive oil. The average capacity utilization rate of the sector is also around 20%. About 71% of olive oil mills have three-phase decanter, 27% of them have two-phase decanter and 2% are operated as press extraction process. On the other hand, 78% of three -phase decanters used in olive oil mills can easily convert to 2-phase systems without loss of capacity and efficiency, but only 2% of them cannot be convert to two-phase systems. Approximately 89% of the olive oil mills are stored the olive oil mill wastewater in the evaporation lagoons.