How Israel is turning olive oil into high-value ingredients and products
“The olive oil industry has faced the same challenge for millennia: most of the olive goes to waste,” says Len Pader, vice president of business development at PhenOlives
For nearly 7,000 years, olive oil production has followed the same basic process—extracting oil from olives while leaving most of the fruit unused.
Only about 15% of the olive becomes oil; the remaining 85%, made up of pulp and residues, is typically discarded as waste. An Israeli startup, PhenOlives, is working to change that equation by turning this byproduct into a nutritious olive flour using patented technology.
“The olive oil industry has faced the same challenge for millennia: most of the olive goes to waste,” says Len Pader, vice president of business development at PhenOlives.
The company’s core idea is to recover this unused 85% before oxidation sets in. Once olives are pressed, residues begin to oxidize in under 20 minutes, rendering them unsuitable for consumption.
PhenOlives says it has developed a unique process that halts oxidation almost immediately. The company claims it is currently the only producer worldwide capable of creating edible olive flour directly from olive oil waste. Installed inside an olive mill, its system diverts fresh residues onto a dedicated processing line instead of sending them to storage tanks.
The process dries and cools the olive pulp, transforming what begins as wet, foul-smelling waste into a fine, stable powder. “At the start, it’s something no one would touch,” Pader explains. “At the end, it’s a dry powder you can handle, taste, and cook with.”
From a nutritional standpoint, olive flour offers several advantages. According to the company, it contains up to four times more polyphenols than olive oil, is more than 80% fiber, low in carbohydrates and sugars, and has a neutral flavor that allows it to be easily incorporated into a wide range of foods.
Beyond food innovation, PhenOlives positions its technology as a significant step forward for an industry that includes nearly 25,000 olive mills worldwide. By converting waste into a high-value ingredient, the company aims to modernize an ancient tradition—bringing sustainability, nutrition, and technology together in the global olive oil sector.