The customer
Frantoio Bonamini is a family-run business led by Giancarlo and Sabrina Bonamini, farming around 25 hectares of olive groves with more than 7,200 trees in the Illasi area, near Verona. Every year it produces between 280,000 and 300,000 bottles of extra virgin olive oil, with around 20% going to export markets. The facility employs ten permanent staff, supported by seasonal workers during the harvest, and is organised into dedicated areas for milling, storage, bottling and visitor reception.
The challenge
In extra virgin olive oil packaging, every stage of the process affects the final result: reducing contact with air, keeping fill levels consistent, limiting downtime and ensuring container cleanliness matter just as much as the quality of the raw material. Frantoio Bonamini was looking for a solution that could bring several processing stages together in a single machine, making the best use of the space in the bottling department and ensuring operational continuity even with production spread across many labels and formats.
The Eurostar solution
The Eurostar machine arrived at the company through an opportunity seized at the right moment: the monoblock, originally built in 2006 for an olive mill in Puglia that never put it into operation, was bought by Frantoio Bonamini in 2017 through a dealer. From that first contact, Eurostar provided all the technical support needed to adapt the monoblock to the company’s production requirements, beginning a working relationship that has grown stronger over time.
The MEC AV 9/9/1VA monoblock combines blowing, high-vacuum filling and capping in a single solution, in a configuration with nine blowing nozzles, nine filling valves and one capping head dedicated to aluminium caps with built-in pourer.
Its operating principle is based on creating a high degree of vacuum inside the bottle during the filling cycle, which allows the product to reach the set level regardless of dimensional variations in the glass containers — a feature particularly well suited to high-value products such as extra virgin olive oil. The configuration also makes it possible to switch quickly between bottle formats from 250 ml up to one litre, reducing downtime during changeovers.
The results
- Theoretical line capacity of around 2,000 bottles/hour, with the monoblock itself able to reach 2,500 bottles/hour, run on average at around 1,000 bottles/hour to suit production spread across many labels and formats.
- Reduced turbulence in the liquid, less foaming and less air incorporation, protecting the product’s organoleptic characteristics.
- Operational reliability confirmed over time: although it dates back to 2006, the monoblock continues to deliver high performance with little need for extraordinary maintenance.
- An established working relationship covering service, spare parts and technical support, including remote assistance, with the upgrade to IFS certification managed together with Eurostar.
In their words
“The filler’s operating principle is based on creating a high degree of vacuum inside the bottle during the filling cycle: the product therefore reaches the set level regardless of small dimensional differences between glass containers.”
Alessandro Castagno, Founder and CEO of Eurostar
“It could easily run at 2,500 bottles an hour, including on production runs dedicated to a single format and a single product. We use it at lower rates because our production is highly diversified, but we value its reliability, the limited need for extraordinary maintenance and the fact that it can be used intensively.”
Giancarlo Bonamini, Frantoio Bonamini
Source: case history originally published on Alimentibevande.it, April 2026
