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The olive crushing operation  The crushing operation shatters the cells of the olive pulp and causes seepage of some oil which is collected during this phase.
There are two types of machineries used to obtain this result: the first is a muller mill composed of two, four or six granite wheels, connected to a central rotating axis in a large stainless steel basin (see photo). The rotation of wheels crushes and kneads the crushed olive mass continually until it becomes a homogeneous paste.
The contact surface of the wheels is designed with dents chiseled into the crushing surface to create a functional rough pattern that does not cause excessive reduction of the size of the olive nut fragments in the paste.
The Muller Mill has the following advantages:
- it ruptures the pulp cells of the olives without reducing excessively either them or the size of the olive nut fragments
- it favors the formation of larger drops of olive oil so that the blades that scrape the paste that accumulates on the side of the basin containing the process, thus assisting the kneading activity by continually directing the fruit mass under the wheels.
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