The Amalfi Citrus-Fruit Processing Co-operative was founded in 1992 and is made up almost exclusively of members of the Aceto family, which has been involved in lemon-growing and -processing for more than three generations. It was in 1825 that Salvatore Aceto bought a small plot of land in Ravello and began to work as a lemon producer and dealer.
The family company grew and reached a peak of activity in the years between 1930 and 1938, during which time it had a thriving export business. After the devastation caused by the Second World War, it gradually and with no little hardship rebuilt its business in national markets, becoming the major producer of lemons on the Amalfi Coast. It did, however, face stiff competition from Sicilian and Calabrian producers who, benefiting from the large amounts of easily cultivatable land available to them, produced far greater quantities of lemons than was possible on the mountainous Amalfi-area terrain.
To the detriment of quality, the Sicilian and Calabrian producers contributed to a drop in the price of lemons, so alarming the Aceto brothers that they decided to distinguish their production from that of the competition and initiated a campaign to increase awareness of their particular "Amalfi Sfusato " lemon, the quality and characteristics of which are unique in the world. At the end of the '60s, more land was purchased for lemon growing, the most important of which is that located in the "Valle dei Mulini", producing approximately 80,000 kilos of lemons per year.
In 1989, Luigi Aceto decided to found a co-operative for processing the "Amalfi Sfusato" lemon. In only two years, having set up its own business organisation, C.A.T.A. Co. Ltd. succeeded in distributing its products, using the "Valle dei Mulini" brand name, not only throughout Italy but also to many European Union countries, to North America, Australia and Japan.
The co-operative also owns the "Rural Culture, Art and Trades Museum", situated next to its laboratory and filled with a marvellous collection of tools and other examples of local history and craftsmanship.

 

 

Eighteenth-century press.
Rural Culture, Art and Trades Museum

 

C.A.T.A. s.c.r.l.
Amalfi Citrus-Fruit Processing Co-operative
e-mail: cata@starnet.it