Colavita

Colavita
Private (family-owned)
Industry food processing
Headquarters Rome, Sant'Elia a Pianisi, Edison, New Jersey, Italy, with offices in the United States
Area served
 Worldwide
Key people
 Enrico and Leonardo Colavita
Products Pasta, Olive Oil, Tomato Sauce, Soup, Vinegar, Wine[1]
Website www.colavita.it

Colavita is an Italian company best known for olive oil.

As of 2010, the brothers Enrico and Leonardo Colavita ran the company, with Enrico serving as President and Leonardo as General Manager, and other members of the family serving in management roles, including Leonardo’s son Giovanni, who was President of Colavita USA.[2] Their father started the packaging business in the 1930s;[1] their family, and many other families in the town of Sant'Elia a Pianisi and the wider Province of Campobasso, had grown and pressed olive oil for generations.[2] The company owns a packaging plant in Pomezia, which also packages olive oil under the brands Rachael Ray All-Italian Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Santa Sabina.[2]

Giovanni Colavita, CEO of Colavita USA

Colavita USA was in part founded by John J Profaci who, at the time, was a resident of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Profaci was introduced to Enrico Colavita in 1978 after Colavita came to the United States. Profaci, who had been in the olive oil business, agreed to go into business with Colavita as the US distributor for the company.[3] The US distribution started slowly, with Profaci offering samples of the oil at a local grocery store, and then starting to sell to Italian restaurants and to speciality stores.[3] Then in the mid-1980s the New York Times ran a feature on the health benefits of foods with monounsaturated fat like olive oil, and the article included a picture of a bottle of Colavita olive oil. The publicity caused the business grow quickly.[3]

In 1991 Colavita USA donated $2 million to the Culinary Institute of America in exchange for naming rights to a new building on the campus; the building opened in 2001 after CIA spent $7 million total to complete it.[3]

In 2008 Colavita acquired Colavita USA.[4]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "Sponsored Content: Italy Part I". Foreign Affairs. Foreign Affairs. April 25, 2016.
  2. 1 2 3 Vivante, Lucy (29 September 2010). "Leonardo Colavita and the UC Davis Olive Oil Report". Olive Oil Times.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Colavita USA, Which Started in Edison, Brings Extra-Virgin Olive Oil To New Jersey Customers". 11 December 2012. Retrieved 27 April 2017.
  4. ↑ "Storia" (in Italian). Colavita. Retrieved 9 June 2017.
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