The La Carrera cooperative, as we know it in its current facilities, was born with the idea of continuing the work that was being carried out in the city by a "private mill" to collect, grind and market top quality olive oil. This "private mill" was typical of the so-called "industrial", located in the street that is today is Avenue of the Constitution; it was dedicated to grind and take olives to its clients or cosecheros, property of D. Juan Fernández Madrid. This man died in the war without leaving children heirs. The mill passed to his sister Dª Francisca Fernández de Madrid, mother-in-law of D. Julio Corzo and D. Pedro Almagro.
In those years of 1940 after the war, the mill was leased, in operation, to Mr. Baltasar Lara who already had another mill in front of his property. In this way, he avoided the competition.
Two brothers agreed to buy the mill from Mr. Baltasar Lara, trying to exploit together with Manuel Blanca Garcia, this "coffee machine" with two hydraulic dams and two stone mills.
D. Manuel Blanca Garcia already had another mill on Valencia of Úbeda Street. Because he had experience, he decided to become merchants of olive oil with their home in Madrid. They worked for some time, but the Society was not profitable and they decided to close it.
After some time, the mill with its few facilities and now, limited experience, proposed the idea of building a Cooperative.
With the firm decision to found a new olive oil cooperative in the city they decided submitted plans to the local and regional authorities, presenting them with all the relevant requests, but the existing mills and cooperatives such as the "El Molinillo" cooperative and the mills Gasó and Lara objected, claiming that there were already three mills in the same city and that they were sufficient.
Mr. Pedro Almagro was, at that time, in the banking, stock exchange and savings union idustry, since he played the role of Director in the Savings Bank of Granada. He knew the trade union operation and began to move the request of the Cooperative forward. Finally, in 1968, they granted the necessary permissions for the Construction of the Oil mill.
A provisional governing board was appointed and the next step was to find a place, since the one that occupied was very small. At that time the mayor of Úbeda, D. Miguel Sánchez Diaz, proposed an extension of the street. For this he expropriated 300 meters of the 3,000 meters owned by D. Pedro Almagro that sold to the Cooperative.
Pedro Almagro and D. Andrés Carlos Martínez de las Peñas were present at the offices of FABREGAS (Madrid), and agreed to purchase the 11,000 square meters they had, and they then assembled 13,700 meters and started the activity and negotiations where the Cooperative is currently located.
They met with Mr. Andrés Moreno Siles for the realization of the work, as they had no project or license. They commissioned Mr. Marín Uceda, Agricultural Engineer. As there was also no money for the work, and there were already many farmers aiming to belong to this Cooperative, the Interim Board agreed to a Personal Credit Policy of 5 million pesetas in the Banco Hispano Americano, guaranteed by D. Ramón Díaz Saro, D Pedro Almagro, Julio Corzo and Fernando Biedma.
Mr. Andrés Moreno Siles accepted the deal to do the work, but in order to collect it had to be approved by the General Meeting of Members and otherwise did not charge.
At that time, the Director General of Agrarian Industry was Miguel Alponte, a friend and study partner of Pedro Almagro. In filing the aid file, this Director recognized the name of D. Pedro whom he had not seen since before the War (almost 30 years), and called him on the telephone, told him the case and promised him an interview with the Minister of Agriculture to study in depth the anomaly committed.
Shortly afterwards, he received the call of his friend for the interview granted him by the Minister, he first went through the office of his friend the Director General and then the Minister's office, who, without paying much attention to the facts, authorized to modify the decree and the file, making it condition that the work were not conducted in more than 90%, then passed to the Council of Ministers for approval.
Shortly after the grant was received and with it they could finish the work of the buildings and offices that we currently began. In 1969 the first General Meeting was convened on August 20, and in it, among other things, it was unanimously agreed to raise the Provisional Governing Board to definitive, being as follows:
- PRESIDENT: Mr. Pedro Almagro Ruiz
- SECRETARY: Mr. Juan Cruz Bellón
- TREASURER: D Andrés Carlos Martínez Peñas
- VOCALS: Mr. Alfonso Guerrero Martínez, Mr. José Medina de Dios and Mr. Domingo Molina Molina.
SOURCE: D. Pedro Almagro Ruiz
At the moment our facilities occupy an area of 12.000 m2. We are located in the municipality of Úbeda, at 44 Comendador Messías Street. With access for all type of vehicles, it has only a single entrance, with access to said street.
These facilities are divided into several parts: warehouse 1, warehouse 1, warehouse 2, warehouse 3, warehouse of supplies, warehouse of merchandise, offices of technical service and phytosanitary products, main patio, oil depots and the oil mill itself, where the olive oil is received and produced.
Occupying the main part of the entrance are the offices and the store. It also consists of a second floor where the auditorium is located. In the offices you will find the credit section, the commercial department, the accounting department, the presidency and the customer service, in the store you can buy the products we import. In the back of the entrance bay is the packing plant. The packaging plant consists of two packaging lines, connected with a contiguous warehouse 1, consisting of 18 deposits of 50,000 liters, each prepared for packaging. Attached to the entrance bay are the warehouse for warehouse 2 and another 21 warehouses of 50,000 liters each.
In total between warehouse 1, warehouse 2, warehouse 3 and air depots, a maximum quantity of 8,000 tons of oil can be stored.
The main building where the oil mill is situated is divided into two parts, one part for the reception where the olives are cleaned and weighed.
The part of the olive reception has 9 complete lines with hopper, cleaner, washing machine, scale, and conveyor belts. Next, the clean olive is transported to the oil processing plant.
The oil processing plant is composed of 6 heat exchangers, 7 decants and 7 vertical centrifuges. In the process of oil production the fat part, which will be the oil, is separated from the solid part composed of: pulp, mesocarp, bone and some fatty solid residues. The seed is separated from this paste called "alperujo", to be sold as fuel for boilers; And the "alperujo" is transported by trucks to refining plants to extract lower quality oils such as lower grade olive oil and olive pomace oil.
The oil extracted in the extraction plant is of 3 types: Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Virgin Olive Oil and Lampante Olive Oil, always using cold extraction.
The factory was inaugurated in 1969. At that time, the method of extracting oil was by mechanical presses. Since then, the cooperative was modernized and adapted to new techniques of obtaining olive oil. Below are the processes for obtaining the product once the cleaned olives are received.
Grinding
Grinding is aimed at breaking the tissues where the oily matter is housed and must be performed with the greatest possible uniformity. This operation can be carried out with several types of mills:
1. Stones: Stones. Cylindrical.
2. Metallic: Hammers
Smoothie
The purpose of the shake-up is to collect the liquid droplets dispersed in the ground pulp, in related continuous phases, in order to facilitate and increase the solid-liquid separation in the following processing operations.
To do this, it is necessary to take into account a number of factors:
The material of the wall and pallets of the mixer must be made of stainless steel, it is necessary to maintain a careful control of temperature (the optimal temperature is 25-30 ° C in the final mass of the mixture), and the duration of the shake should be sufficient to achieve the highest possible percentage of loose oil.
SEPARATION OF SOLID AND LIQUID PHASES
Partial removal
This is an intermediate process of solid-liquid separation, in which the highest quality oil is obtained, the yield of this one oscillates between 10-15% of the total oil.
This practice must be performed if an oil of excellent quality is to be obtained, as opposed to that obtained by pressure or centrifuge.
Pressing
It has traditionally been the most widely used method for separating the liquid from the solid phase. The prepared paste is placed in thin layers on the mats, these are placed on top of each other and subjected to the pressure process.
Spinning of Folders
This solid-liquid separation system is based on the classifier effect produced by the centrifugal force generated by a rotor rotating at approximately 3,000 RPM in the constituents of the beaten olive mass.
Three phase system or outputs
This is known as the centrifugation system equipped with a decanter that has three separate outputs of products, separated during centrifugation and consisting mainly of oil, alpechín and marc.
This system uses a certain addition of hot water to the mass before entering the decanter, in order to make more fluid and obtain a better separation of the liquid phases, oil and alpechín, or water of vegetation.
Two phase system or outputs
This system has two outputs of products, oil and alperujo (pomace plus vegetation water).
This equipment generally does not use the addition of water and does not produce alpechín liquid, being that this liquid phase occluded in the produced pomace. With this new system, a significant part of the effluent and its pollutant load in the mills are reduced, producing in return a solid by-product with a higher degree of humidity.
SEPARATION OF LIQUID PHASES
Decanting
The classical method of separation of oil and alpechín, based on the difference of density between both, is carried out in a battery of containers.
Centrifugation
Based also on the separation of the different phases by difference of densities, increasing the gravity with the centrifugation.
