Project Overview
Uruguay has the highest organic food consumption per capita in South America, with an educated consumer base that understands organic certification and is willing to pay 2–3× conventional price for genuine certified products. This Montevideo food company sources peanuts from certified organic farms in Rivera Department (north Uruguay) and processes them into cold-pressed certified organic peanut oil for premium Uruguayan retail and potential EU export.
Challenge
Organic certification imposes design constraints that go beyond food-grade standards: no chemical processing aids (no hexane, no bleaching chemicals, no synthetic antioxidants), no physical contamination with non-organic product, and complete chain of custody traceability from farm to bottle. Every equipment choice must be defensible under MGAP audit: stainless steel grade (SS316 for organic, not SS304 which may have crevice corrosion harbouring non-organic residues), cleaning protocols documented, no shared lines with conventional processing.
The EU organic export pathway required additional documentation layer: EU Regulation 2018/848 chain of custody certificates, operator registration, and lot-level traceability compatible with European customs requirements. This was built into the plant design from day one.
Solution
SinoOil designed the plant with SS316 as standard for all oil contact surfaces (tanks, filters, pipework, fittings) — a specification upgrade over standard SS304, justified by the organic premium pricing. Cold-press configuration: two 6YL-130 presses at low RPM (40 RPM), 72-hour natural settling in SS316 tanks, SS316 plate filter. No heat above 50°C anywhere in the oil path.
Nitrogen blanketing on all four SS316 storage tanks maintains headspace oxygen below 0.1%, preserving peroxide value below 2 meq/kg throughout storage without any chemical antioxidant — a critical organic compliance point. The 500 ml dark glass bottling station fills and caps under an organic chain of custody record that connects each bottle to a specific farm lot, pressing date, and MGAP organic certificate number.
The documentation system produces MGAP organic certificates, EU 2018/848 compatible chain of custody records, and FFA/peroxide quality certificates — all in Spanish and English, enabling the client to respond to the Netherlands EU organic importer inquiry that arrived within 12 months of commissioning.