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LUNARDI890 s a company which values the link between family traditions and traditional artisan techniques in the creation of its pure Tuscan olive oil.
The company was founded in 1890 when Ireneo Lunardi began to produce and sell Tuscan olive oil in the provinces of Pistoia and Florence. Later , in 1916 , the company of Ireneo Lunardi & Sons was set up and registered as a trade mark at the trade office of Florence (number 1786).
Today the company’s philosophy is simple: to create the very best Tuscan Extra Virgin olive oil.
To achieve this, our oil undergoes strict biological and physical checks, with close attention being paid to every stage of production, from the pressing of the olives to the bottling, in order to guarantee the purity and authenticity of the final product.
Our production process is characterised by a respect for the unique area surrounding the company and production is limited so as to obtain a healthy and natural oil, rich in naturally occurring nutrients.”
Harvests are carried out exclusively by hand in the historical olive groves in the hills of Vinci (Florence), situated approximately 250 metres above sea level.
In the twenties and thirties the commercial relations of the company were extended throughout Italy with important customers in Milan, Genoa, and also in Switzerland under the brand name PRO LIFE (1920). This Extra Virgin Olive oil, created solely for export, carried important information, printed onto the cans, which guarenteed the quality of the oil, the origin, and the nutritional properties of the product in three languages (French, English and German).
Ireneo, whose expertise and ability in the field of oil-making was undisbuted, became an important trading merchant for the industry. So great was his ability in business, combined with the deep knowledge of the oil industry itself, that he caught the attention of many important people including Senator Gaslini Girolamo (1877-1964). Senator Gaslini, who, as well as holding institutional positions, was the owner of one of the most important oil mills of the time, invited Ireneo to start a busy commercial collaboration with him.
Thanks to the entrepreneurial resourcefulness of his sons Ubaldo and Raphael in the years 1918 -1920 he developed many commercial activities, purchasing and selling olive oils from the best Italian producers. This fervent trade later lead to the Company creating an industrial oil refinery (with its own railway link) as olive oil domestic production at the time was suffering from the lack of pressing mills, especially in the south, where over half of the olives picked stood in the premises of the mills for long waiting time, adversely altering the quality.
The oil produced at that time in Italy (1934 -1935) was of low quality (unlike now where mills are provided with facilities for continuous cycle, olive washing processes, etc.). They were highly acidic and unpalatable. In order to be marketed it had to undergo an industrial refining process, something the Lunardi brothers had known for some time.
OUR HISTORY
The industrial refining activities were discontinued in the sixties with the olive oil sector with the arrival of mass production in Italy and abroad, which lead to the heavy modernization of refining facilities that dissuaded Ubaldo and Raphael from continuing their work.
Despite this, the brothers continued to devote their time to the production and trade of Tuscan and Italian oil (1970) supplying directly to their customers.
Today the company produces and distributes Tuscan oil in accordance with scrupulous disciplinary guidelines guarenteeing its protected geographical indication (IGP) status, monitoring every stage of production; from the harvesting and pressing of the olives to product packaging.
Lunardi’s mission statement is to pursue excellence in its Tuscan Oilve Oil and it’s thanks to this philosophy that we are able to obtain the best crops every year, according to the climatic characteristics of each vintage.
