Ybarra

Today instead of having class, we went on a company visit to a company called Ybarra. Ybarra is a company right outside the city of Sevilla that makes olive oil, mayonnaise, and salsas. The company has been there since the 1800s and is family owned.

We got to tour the factory and see how everything is done! It was really cool, and interesting. Dr. Delgadillo translated for us. The man who took us around the factory is the head of the department of quailty control. He was very nice and let us go to lots of parts of the factory that they apparently don't normally let tour groups go.

First we saw how the olive oil is put into the bottles. You'll see empty bottles here on the left, and on the right, the bottles are full. There is a big circular machine there that squirts the olive oil into the bottles. These bottles are the smallest bottles of olive oil that they sell in Spain. They even have 5 liter bottles of it! They send the smaller bottles to places like America, where we don't use it as often. Also, he explained to us that we Americans like a different kind of olive oil than the Spaniards do. We like it with a lower acidity than they do...the extra virgin olive oil.

He also took us around and showed us where they make the bottles for the olive oil. They make the bottles on site now because they realized that it would save them tons of money to start making them as opposed to buying them. They make the bottles by adding heated air to the little test tube looking thing on the right, and it becomes a bottle like the one on the left! It was really neat to see how that worked, it was so fast!

We also got to see them adding cocktail sauce to the bottles for it. Ybarra has a one year contract with Heinz right now to make and package this sauce for them. They want to extend the contract.

He also took us to the factory warehouse where they store all of the food that they make before sending it out to the stores.

It was a really fun and interesting way to spend the morning! I loved it!

Later in the day we all went to a lecture on World Religion from a Tech professor. It was different than we were expecting, but it was okay. Then K'Lann and I went to go to the palace, but it was closed already. I will go there someday! We went shopping instead and had a great time! :)