The family that puts your name laser-marked on table olives: the innovation that wants to open up a market from the Terra Alta

Saint Sadurní d'AnoiaThe company Blai Peris, from Bot (Terra Alta), wants to demonstrate that innovation can also be applied to the food that has civilized humanity since ancient times, olives. “The idea of personalizing them came to me while thinking about what we could do with our olives to take a step further in the market. Then I proposed to my cousin to try it with his laser machine, and the surprise was to see that yes, it worked on the first try,” explains Àlex Peris, who together with his brother Blai is at the head of the business. As he explains, olives have the particularity that they are packaged in a liquid that protects them from the outside, which allows them to be preserved even after engraving their skin. And that is how they have made olives with the Barça logo, which they served on the day of the team presentation through the catering offered by the company Cal Blay. “This innovation, which no one had done before, we have not been able to patent, but we hope that we will soon be able to do so, since we are working on a process that will help to better visualize the engraving: olives dyed with natural dyes and personalized,” continues Àlex Peris.

When it comes to innovating, the Peris brothers are a bottomless well. They have also fermented olives in different wooden barrels, because they want to give them depth of flavor, as has been done with wine for years. It is another idea they had, and the result is good. "We use barrels from Boteria Torné, made of wood such as oak, chestnut, and acacia". These are yet more olives they are bringing to the market, of the empeltre variety, which they have fermented in barrels along with brine.The company Blai Peris was inaugurated by the father, Eduard, in 1986. It began with Empeltre olives, which are typical of the Terra Alta and also of the nearby towns in Aragon, and with Arbequina olives. Some time later, it continued with olive tapenades. "My father has always been very restless, and with a great capacity for work. The Empeltre olives, just as he brought them to market, he thought of all by himself one night, when he was doing tests. Finally, he put them in an oil bath, and that is how, all on his own, he found a market niche to commercialize them," says the youngest son, who adds that the olives they use come from their own olive groves. A new range, Les Xarnegues

With both children in the company, Blai Peris has made more plot twists. Now they also have a new range, Les Xarnegues, which allows them to sell olives from other producing areas. “We find Blai olives in mid-to-high segment supermarkets, and we want to take advantage of this position and experience to offer consumers other good olives that move away from the Catalan production tradition".And to continue, one more project, with which they will grow more and which they will be able to build thanks to the grant they have just received. It is a new factory, which they will build in Bot, within the transition zone of the Ascó nuclear power plant, for which they have obtained a grant of three million euros. "Since the nuclear plants will close, one way to fix the population is to create new job offers, which is why we applied for these grants for business projects, with which we want to add value to and internationalize our olives," says Peris, who adds that the factory costs five million, two of which they will put up themselves. Thus, the innovations that the Blai brothers bring to their father's company are in design and volume, with which they want to open up markets to the world. In fact, the Peris family's enthusiasm for olives is contagious. They believe that table olives have a long way to go, and that they are not just the appetizer that is not given importance. Furthermore, they believe that they are satisfied with the quality they offer, and maintain that if it were not so, Jaén, the very province of Jaén, would not be buying olives from them, as it is currently doing.And regarding their star product right now, the personalized olives, Àlex comments that they are very happy with the reception. On these large olives, coming from Seville, which they sell at €0.50 per order of 100 olives, they have placed the names of a bride and groom and their wedding date, the Barcelona 'panot' and also the names of supermarkets where they sell them. Soon they will launch a website through which one will be able to make olives with the names or logos that each person wants.