Parga :: Comparisson reports

 

When walking through Parga, we came across a museum occupying an old olive oil factory.

 

The museum occupies a spot where olives from the nearby areas were brought in. Women were the primary workers here, washing and selecting the olives to be processed later inside the factory.

 

Once inside, the olives were weighed and taken to the mill where they were pressed. For this they used a diesel motor which was refrigerated with water. The residual hot water was used by the women to wash the olives. Unlike the techniques used today, hot water was also used to extract the oil. They favored quantity over quality at the time.

 

Detail of the scale

 

 

 

Mill

 

 

 

German-made diesel motor

 

 

 

Once the milling process was completed, lasting up to half an hour, the resulting paste was then run through a press. The mixture of oil and water was then left in wooden tanks for several days for the water and oil to separate due to their different densities.

 

Press

 

 

 

Wooden tanks to decant the mixture

 

 

 

The waste from the factory was dumped into the sea via pipes, while the oil was bottled. The factory was closed in 1979 due to the resulting pollution on Parga’s beach. It was incompatible with the city’s incipient tourism trade.

 

Pipes to eliminate waste

 

 

 

Our thanks to Mr. Ilias Liakris (Paragaea) for the information provided.