History of MIVOR
With the signing of the notarial merger agreement on 31 October 2007, the MIVO und ORTLER cooperatives, both situated in Laces, became Europe’s largest fruit processing company called MIVO-ORTLER cooperative or MIVOR for short.
The history of the two cooperatives can be summarized as follows:
MIVO
On 5 March 1954, 12 men signed the foundation of the MIVO cooperative under the supervision of a notary from Merano in the so-called "Peggerstübele" in Laces. 54 members joined the cooperative in the foundation year with production quantities of 200 wagonloads.
ORTLER
The ORTLER cooperative was founded on 20 February 1960 by 36 members from Laces, Morter, Tarres and Vezzano with a production of 170 wagonloads.
The aim of both cooperatives was the common storage, processing and commercialization of the fruit delivered by the members. The subsequent years were characterized by an enormous upturn in agriculture thanks to amelioration, reallocation of land and irrigation and grassland was turned into orchards. This resulted in space problems and while MIVO decided to move to the industrial zone in 1976, ORTLER followed in 1979 as immediate neighbour. The subsequent years were characterized by lively building activity, as the storage capacities had to be constantly increased and the packaging and sorting plants had to be modernized. Thanks to farsighted and risky decisions of the managers for decades, the MIVO and ORTLER cooperatives could work their way up to modern businesses. In 2007, the members of both cooperatives approved the new VI.P 3 commercialization concept and on 27 July 2007, the member assemblies decided in favour of the merger. The three pillars of the VI.P 3 concept – common market presence, measures for cost reduction, high quality production – should best come to fruition in South Tyrol’s largest cooperative with the help of these steps.
The packaging room
The packaging room was completely rebuilt in 2008 and now corresponds to state-of-the-art technology.
Sorting
The GREEFA sorting machine was inaugurated in January 2011. Thanks to 10 lanes and 66 canals it has got a sorting capacity of app. 25 – 30 tons per hour, depending on the variety. A filtration plant for the purification and reuse of the water used in the process enables a responsible use of water resources.
Storage
A new automatic high shelf store with storage capacities for app. 5,500 tons of apples was opened in September 2011. It substitutes the traditional handling facilities and supplements the already existing controlled atmosphere cells for another 80,000 tons of apples.
The MIVOR company
MIVOR disposes of enough storage capacities for 8,500 wagonloads of quality fruit due to its company grounds of app. 11 ha. The administrative building, which was newly built in 2004, offers space for 12 administration employees. In addition to another 40 constant employees, app. 90 seasonal workers are employed.
Products/assortment:
The Golden Delicious variety constitutes 72 % of our members’ apple production. The remaining 28% are distributed among red varieties such as Red Delicious, which is very popular in Italy, as well as Gala, Pinova, Jonagold, Braeburn, Fuji and other varieties.
Food safety and traceability:
The whole production flow was equipped with a special software program as early as in 2002, which enables the collection of all important data in all production phases. We can therefore guarantee traceability of the product from the individual packing to the delivered fruits of our farmers.
Certifications
Because of increasingly stricter requirements for hygiene and quality the MIVO-ORTLER cooperative has undergone the ISO 9001:2000 and International Food Standard (IFS) certifications. Furthermore, nearly 100% of the farmers are EUREP-GAP certified (from 2008 Global-GAP).
