Olive Oil Production and Circularity Pathways in South Italy: A Life Cycle Costing (LCC) View into Economic Performance and Benefits

The adoption of a new resilient and regenerative economic model is becoming increasingly important and of general interest, especially due to the extraordinary events that are characterizing the global scenario. The adoption of strategies based on the concept of Circular Economy (CE), could be a valid solution, especially for production processes typified by a large production of retrievable by-products, such as agri-food processes as the olive-oil supply chain. However, applying the conceptual model of CE to practical reality requires a preliminary assessment of the sustainability of this model. In this context, this study assessed the economic sustainability, through the Life Cycle Costing (LCC) methodology, of circular strategies applied to the olive oil sector in the three main olive-growing regions of Southern Italy: Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily. Analyses focused on the agricultural production phase and the olive-to-oil processing phase in different case studies, comparing “circular” scenarios with those conducted without the implementation of community practices, known as “linear” scenarios. The results show that the overall economic performance of the circular scenarios, agricultural stage, and continuous olive processing, is better than that of the linear scenarios. This result, however, very often relates not only to lower operating costs (which are sometimes higher in circular scenarios) but also to higher productivity. The adoption of circular strategies, however, requires higher investments for the purchase of specific machinery, which may still be an economic barrier to the adoption of the CE model.