Aixada Conservas (Hoe preserves in English) is the result of the effort and love of three generations of the same family for local and small-scale agriculture, as well as the artisanal preparation of the recipes of their ancestors.
Mª Àngels Puertas Badorrey and his husband want to perpetuate the customs and traditions of their grandparents and great-grandparents by farming in the same way that they did. This is where the name Aixada Conservas comes from. Even now, they keep and use the hoes of their ancestors. With this symbolic act they have wanted to honor and remember them, leaving latent that their legacy will always accompany them and mark their way of making their products.
Aixada Conservas is a line of preserves that includes olive spread or tapenade, alone or with other foods, as well as jams and vegetable preparations.
“As of today, Aixada Conservas customers know that what they buy is 100% natural, 100% artisan and also 100% well preserved.”
Ma Àngels Puertas, owner of Aixada Conservas
Problem: professionalize and scale up production
Aixada Conservas was born by pure chance, since at first it was only made at home and distributed among close friends, it was not until gastronomy professionals tried her creations that she realized the potential of its recipes.
Professionalizing was an adventure for Mª Àngels. His way of understanding preserves took a 180 degree turn, since until then she had only produced preserves on a small scale and completely homemade. Now, instead, she had to increase production and, therefore, produce them in a professional setting, equipped with all the appropriate machinery.
She was looking for a place that met the conditions she needed, which consisted of being close to her orchards, not being a mandatory permanent stay, assuming a feasible financial outlay and having the appropriate technical requirements for his activity.
Once again, randomness changed the life of Mª Àngels when she found Municipal Food Business Incubator of Tagamanent town hall (VEAMAT). When she joined the collective workshop she had to adapt to the quality standards and norms of the organization. Share the facilities, organize your tasks according to the schedules, learn to use the machinery offered, etc.
And she had to do all of this without forgetting the essence of her recipes, 100% handmade, without additives or unnatural preservatives.
Challenge: keep making preserves in a traditional manner
Making one of the core value propositions of your product an artisanal production without any type of artificial additives is at the same time a handicap for Aixada Conservas. That is why all her effort has gone into ensuring that her preserves respect family recipes but above all reach consumers in perfect conditions.
Thus, at the time of its preparation, she encountered a series of complications such as the entry of air into the container, the lack of knowledge of the ideal storage temperature, the optimal selection of each ingredient so that they did not interfere with each other and how to rectify the resulting acidity in the elaborations.
Solution: seek technical help from a food advisor
“Meeting Albert has meant a giant qualitative leap for our products. His guidance is invaluable to us. The truth is that being a small family business like we are, we would never have imagined having access to such a professional technical food advice with a great level of empathy at all interactions with us.”
Ma Àngels Puertas, owner of Aixada Conservas
Despite her experience in traditional packaging, Mª Àngels realized that, as she professionalized, the exigency increased. The use of devices such as the autoclave was a degree of difficulty for which I was not prepared. Therefore, she chose to seek for professional help and contact TERRA Food-Tech technical consultancy service ®. Thanks to her advice, Mª Àngels feels safer when it comes to putting her products on sale and Aixada Conservas has strengthened the trust of its customers in its products.
“Not recommending TERRA Food-Tech® autoclaves would be unfair and selfish, TERRA Food-Tech ® has been a clear before and after for Aixada Conservas, both in terms of the quality of the products we produce but also in terms of the level of safety achieved with our production”.
Ma Àngels Puertas, owner of Aixada Conservas
In our Blog, you will find more information about Aixada Conservas in a interview with Mª Àngels Puertas where she explains her experience in the world of gourmet preserves.