Centra Foods receives questions from countless food manufacturers each year, asking for the best ways to save money on olive oil. Many components can affect the total price of your olive oil, including grade types, packaging, freight, the distance of the FOB point, and experience of the supplier.

If you missed part one of this series, click here.  This week, we will be reviewing the next step to saving: choosing the best (and cheapest) packaging for your production facility.

Part Two: Picking Your Packaging

Now that you've settled on a grade of oil, the next step is to pick the packaging you will receive your oil in. It is one of the most essential and most accessible items to consider if you want to save money.

Let's break down and review the options that will be available to you:

35 Lb. Containers: 4.6-gallon boxes of olive oil. The smallest packaging size recommended for manufacturing and is useful for production lines that use manual pouring. Our minimum order is 60 containers which equates to a full pallet.

55 Gallon Drums: Steel or Plastic drums weight is about 500 lbs — each and works well in a warehouse or space that has a pallet jack or forklift. The oil is easy to get out of the drums with a drum pump.

Totes: 275-gallon sizes come in either a bag in a box or IBC. Typically, oil can either be pumped out of the top of poured out of a spigot located at the bottom of the tote using a gravity drain pump.

You may be familiar with at least one of the options above. Perhaps a more substantial size you hadn't considered will work best for you. To determine that, you'll need to work with your operations and warehouse manager to answer the following:

Efficient Production Line

• Could pumping out of drums or totes be easier than manual pouring?
• Does your production team have to pick up the olive oil and pour it manually?
• Would a storage tank that can tie directly into your production line be most efficient?

Storage Capabilities

• Do you have space to install an oil storage tank inside or out?
• What do you do with the packaging when you're done?
• Do you have space limitations?
• What is the maximum number of pallets that you could hold at one time?
• Do you have limited or expensive disposal space?

Once these questions have been answered, we would love to provide advice on which packaging options are going to work best, whether it be now or in the future.