Agrioil is a company that has learned to be at the same level as Italy and other countless nations scattered across the world.
AGRIOIL, a successful business
Stilla, Lisandro, Rocca and Marchesa Maria have piloted some of the top labels all over the world with the help of Gabriele Quaglia. A leader who has been working in our territory for 30 years as the figurehead of the first SPA.
The history of Agrioil can be summed up in a list of gradual, but continuous steps that have brought it to the point where it is today. It is a company with a turnover of 7 million euros a year, compared to 28,000 hectolitres of bottled oil!
It all began in 1989 with 4 partners who set up a SAS (Limited Partnership) which had operated an old oil mill in Roscigno. After a year they had transformed it into SNC (General Partnership) building a new plant on a hill overlooking Roscigno. It was a few hundred meters from Monte Pruno where the princely tomb was dug.
Agrioil had decided upon a SPA (joint-stock company) in 1998 which gathered the support of more than 100 partners. Each giving a million euros of share towards its capital. This allowed it to make a great leap towards an important relocation in Fonte, the business area in the city of Roccadaspide, where its modern history has taken form.
The leader of the company throughout all of these stages has been Gabriele Quaglia. He has also worked alongside Domenico Cavallo, Giuseppe Lista, Cosimo Stio and Giuseppina Vigorito, who have been dictated to forming the business schedule of the company and the development up of its business plan.
Meanwhile, you can already see that they have not only started to build yet another oil mill, but they have also aimed at bottling and direct marketing giving an added value to the basic product which is the homemade oil "enriched" in many ways: with Garlic, Basil, Chilli Pepper, Lemon, White Truffle, Porcini Mushrooms, Oregano and Rosemary.
The construction of the plant in Fonte, Roccadaspide, where the company is still based, took place in 1998. This is also where the launch on the global market began. In Fonte, Quaglia had found a partner with a similar vision, Franco D'Angelo, the owner of INFRATER. Franco wanted to change the future of the wide, flat, and expanse city of Roccadaspide: giving an opportunity to the large number of small artisan businesses that historically are the soul of the district. He wanted to provide them with a chance to modernize and make a leap towards the future.
start here,…Quaglia and D'Angelo are convinced that their private initiative can also motivate others. They are looking to aspire other administrators to relocate in the area making it more productive.
Unfortunately, this did not happen. They will go ahead with a compromise to build working alongside the basis of art. 10 of the district regulations, which allows the construction of craft sheds only if they take place on an area of at least 4,000 square meters. Everyone has been waiting for the final building. On the other hand, dozens of other productive business relocations have taken place where everyone had felt that it was best to do without services. The roads are not suitable for the large quantity of transport that needs to travel there by road while it is in a place where there is also a lack of primary urbanization works.
Quaglia and all the other entrepreneurs, in alternating phases, still insist, even today, that elementary road and service infrastructures should be built in order to give credit to the "small North-East" that the people from Fonte have believed that reality has been revealed in the first 10 years of the third millennium: dozens of companies that hire workers and create wealth but were confined to many happy islands that had not managed to become an archipelago!
In fact, here are the numbers that Gabriele Quaglia di Agriol gives: 7 Mln of turnover, 14 employees, 28.000 hl of oil bottled under 4 registered brands: Stilla, Agrioil, Rocca, Fonte, Lisandro and Marchesa Maria; there are also 15 other companies that bottle in the plant.
Aqrioil products are divided. 55% are intended for the Italian market and 45% for the foreign market: Japan, China, South Korea, Russia, Switzerland, the USA, Germany, Iran, and Iraq. Quaglia reports that it had to "undergo the cloning of the Stilla brand within China. It took two years and three different processes (one for the written Italian trademark, the other for the written Chinese and the other for the spoken Chinese), to prove the exclusive ownership of the <
Agrioil today is ready for another leap into the future with the construction of a new oil mill, which is in addition to those in Roscigno, Campagna (20%), Postiglione and another 15 which belong to mill members that have a milling capacity of 30 quintals per hour. However the project, which is worth an investment of about 6 million Euros, 50% of which is financed with the PSR, a tax credit and bank loans, will be used to increase its storage space and bottling capacity.
In the field there are two other projects that makes Agrioil a partner of the University of Palermo, while it is also a leader being involved in those of Salerno, Federico II of Naples and the Policlinico Gemelli of Rome. These projects are about experimenting with the optimization of the treatment of processing waste, such as pomace and other residues.
November 15, of 2019 had marked the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Agrioil company. Quaglia had decided that the new oil mill will be inaugurated on this date: "we will celebrate the anniversary with the opening of the new structure adjacent to the historical one in Seude di Roccadaspide.”
Today the company is a point of reference for local entrepreneurs, partners of university study centres and dozens of other oil mills. This has been possible thanks to the work of the men and women who have decided to spend their lives in the land where they were born with the hope of doing well for themselves and for others.
This, like so many other success stories, gives hope that many others will be able to set out on a path of prosperity that is good for them and for the many who live in the same area south of the Sele River that was once the place where civilizations like the Greek, Lucanian and Roman ones settled and grew.
