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King Felipe has played an important role in Pistacyl’s commitment to the commercialization of natural pistachio, as revealed by the president of Grupo Pistacyl, Alfredo Pérez, in a recent interview on the RNE program Ahora Campo.

Although from its origins Pistacyl had always believed in the importance of differentiating itself in the market by promoting the healthy characteristics of this dried fruit, it was in a meeting with Sir Felipe when that idea became a firm commitment.

On October 24, 2011, the Family Business Institute held its XIV National Family Business Congress in Valladolid, which was inaugurated by the then Prince of Asturias.

It was attended by Alfredo Pérez, who was introduced to Don Felipe by his good friend Eduardo Estévez, director of the Family Business of Castilla y León.

They both had a pleasant conversation about pistachio in which, after commenting on how much he liked this dried fruit, Don Felipe told him: ‘Alfredo, you have to try to take advantage of the healthy properties of pistachio, don’t ruin it,’ recommending that they try to certify some of the excellent healthy properties that this food has.

Although they already had the idea of enhancing the natural qualities of this food, Alfredo Pérez picked up Don Felipe’s royal advice “which was a start to betting much more on the healthy type of pistachio and starting to work with it naturally.”

After several years of exciting work and several R&D projects with research centers in Castilla y León and the University of Valladolid, in 2020 Pistacyl was accredited as the first Tierra de Sabor product with the “Healthy Flavor” rating with its Natural pistachio, without roasting or salting, and of excellent quality.

As a thank you for his advice, Pistacyl sent Don Felipe a box with samples of his first containers of natural pistachio, “the fruit of that conversation and so many years of work.”

Shortly after, Alfredo Pérez received a letter from the Zarzuela Palace in which the head of the Royal Household, Jaime Alfonsín, thanked in the name of the King for this detail and congratulated Pistacyl for obtaining the certification, wishing the company good luck in the project.

Currently, the natural pistachio continues to be the main protagonist of Pistacyl’s activity, which markets it in–shell, shelled or in paste form, but always in its natural state, without any type of roasting, salting, sugar or any other additive, which allows it to preserve all its flavor and nutritional properties.

The pistachio from Castile and Leon produced by the Pistacyl company was the protagonist in an exhibition held this summer in the Dutch city of Amsterdam.

The exhibition was part of Rijksakademie Open Studios 2023, a highly prestigious international event in which 40 international artists showed their works and which was visited by more than 10,000 people.

Tom K Kemp, one of the artists participating in this exhibition, used piles of Pistacyl pistachio shells in his work “Dead Minutes” to visualize the scale and accumulation of time and people.

The shells provided by Pistacyl appeared in different areas of the exhibition space and could also be seen in the film that was also part of this work by Tom K Kemp.

The Pistacyl pistachio will return to the exhibition halls next April again thanks to Tom K Kemp, who will exhibit another version of his project “Dead Minutes” at the STRP Festival in Eindhoven (The Netherlands) and in which he will use again the shells of this dried fruit.

Artist, filmmaker and writer, Tom K Kemp uses role-playing game design in his works to tell collaborative ghost stories about the relationships between complexity and the humans who constitute it.

His work has been exhibited at La Casa Encendida (Madrid), at the EYE Filmmuseum and at the Veem House in Amsterdam (Holland), at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg (Germany) and at the Biennale Internationale Design in Saint-Étienne (France).

© Photo: Sander Van Wettum

The Pistacyl company, the main pistachio producer in Castile and Leon that is part of Grupo Pistacyl, has been awarded the 2023 Innovation Award in the second edition of the Agri-Food Innovation Awards of the “Alimentos de Valladolid. To everyone’s liking” brand convened by the Valladolid Provincial Council.

This award is a new recognition of Pistacyl’s firm commitment to innovation and research and which has already been previously endorsed with the Innovative SME Seal of the Ministry of Science and Innovation (2021) and with different distinctions such as the first Rural Business Innovation Award (2017) and the second Award for Innovative Projects for self-employed workers and rural SMEs in the province of Valladolid (2021).

The award was presented to the president of Grupo Pistacyl, Alfredo Pérez, by the president of the Provincial Council of Valladolid, Cornado Íscar, in an event held on September 28 at Espacio La Granja in the capital of Valladolid.

After collecting the award, Alfredo Pérez expressed his gratitude for this award, which he said is the result of the work of the entire Pistacyl team and also of the ProcerealTech Research Group of the University of Valladolid, which collaborates with the company in the development of different Projects.

In his speech, and quoting the words of King Felipe, the president of Grupo Pistacyl stated that without innovation there is no progress or social well-being and encouraged the companies that are part of the Alimentos de Valladolid brand to bet on innovation.

Since its beginning in 2008, Pistacyl has been promoting different research projects aimed at obtaining a unique pistachio due to its size, aroma, color and flavor, and at developing new products derived from this nut that stand out for their qualities and characteristics.

To this end, it has developed 7 research projects with prestigious organizations such as the CDTI, ITACYL or the University of Valladolid that have allowed it to achieve excellent results both in the cultivation method and in improving the quality of the product.

The company is also investigating the production of new products from its crops, such as partially defatted natural pistachio flour, the first to be produced with these characteristics, and pistachio oil, obtained after a cold pressing process of the natural pistachio kernel.

These products, which are in the development phase, are part of the Pistachio Foods project that Grupo Pistacyl has been carrying out with the ProcerealTech Research Group of the Univerisity of Valladolid to obtain comprehensive use of the natural pistachio it produces, in line with its commitment to sustainable agriculture.

Furthermore, this year, the company began to market natural pistachio paste, the first to be made only with raw pistachio ground in three phases in a stone mill, which prevents it from suffering temperature changes that alter its properties.

Along with innovation, quality and food safety, another priority is the group’s production process, which has been endorsed with the Global G. A.P. certificate. and other accreditations that support their agronomically sustainable and zero-waste production methods.

At the same time, the quality of its products is endorsed by the Food of Valladolid and Tierra de Sabor seals and by the Rueda Denomination of Origin in the case of its Desacato wine, which has already obtained the Silver Medal at the 2022 Brussels World Competition.

Grupo Pistacyl has made the Spanish pistachio known in India, where it has shown professionals in the country’s agri-food sector the properties and characteristics of this dried fruit, of which it is the main producing company in Castile and Leon.

Grupo Pistacyl participated in New Delhi in the first edition of Taste Spain India, an event organized on September 15 by ICEX in collaboration with the Economic and Commercial Office of Spain with the aim of facilitating the entry of companies in the Spanish agri-food sector into the Indian market.

The guests at the exhibition were importers, distributors, professionals from the HORECA channel, journalists and Indian opinion leaders from the agri-food sector, to whom Grupo Pistacyl presented the qualities of the pistachio that it always sells naturally, without any type of roasting, salt or any other additive, which allows it to preserve all its nutritional properties.

It also unveiled its natural pistachio paste, which has been widely accepted among Indian professionals, who were able to taste it in a preparation of croquettes.

This paste is a product especially aimed at the hospitality sector and is made only with pistachio ground in three phases in a stone mill, which prevents it from suffering temperature changes that alter its properties.

Grupo Pistacyl took part in the exhibition with its own space where attendees were also able to taste the Desacato wine that this Valladolid family agri-food group produces under the protection of the Rueda Denomination of Origin.

It is a white wine made from 100% Verdejo grapes, which has already seen its quality recognized with a Silver Medal at the Brussels World Competition held in May 2022.

Grupo Pistacyl’s participation in Taste Spain India is part of the internationalization plan that the company is carrying out with the aim of exporting 50 percent of its production. Its participation last May in another similar action organized by the ICEX in Austria is framed along these lines.

Currently, Pistacyl Group products are already present in different foreign markets such as Ireland, France, Portugal or Italy.

Grupo Pistacyl, through its Agrícola Pistacyl service company, has started harvesting grapes in different wine-growing areas of the country where it is applying an innovative precision viticulture process that allows real-time knowledge of the performance of each vine.

The system was launched on an experimental basis during the last campaign in Castile and Leon and Extremadura and for this vintage it has also been extended to La Rioja and Andalusia, so that there will be close to 3,000 hectares of vineyards that will benefit from this technology, which Grupo Pistacyl develops together with the companies Agrícola Castellana and Ingeniería y Gestión.

The system makes it possible to carry out a weighing on the ground of the quantity of grapes that is being collected in each one of the vines, identifying the productivity of each one of them and thus drawing a detailed yield map of the plot.

This map provides precise information on the maturation and vigor index of the vines in each area, with which it is possible to determine the specific treatments, fertilizer and amount of irrigation that are necessary to apply in each one of them to improve their production and thus favor the sustainability in the cultivation of the vine.

In addition, the map serves as a basis for analyzing other data obtained through satellite and sampling carried out on the ground, information that will enable the creation of predictive models of vineyard behavior in relation to its production, which will help winegrowers and wineries to manage and organize their productions and to improve the quality of their harvests.

The system has been installed in three grape harvesting machines that Agrícola Pistacyl is using in this grape harvest campaign. It is equipped with GPS, which also allows the location of the grape harvester to be monitored via mobile phone during work and to contact the driver’s cabin to provide the appropriate instructions.

This precision viticulture process has already been used in the grape harvesting of Bodegas José Estévez, in Jerez de la Frontera (Andalusia) and Bodegas Habla in Trujillo (Extremadura), and it will be applied in the vintage of the Emina wineries, Cuatro Rayas and Miguel Arroyo Izquierdo, from the Denomination of Origin of Rueda. In September it will also arrive in the Ribera de Duero, during the grape harvest at the Durón winery, and will conclude in La Rioja.

As part of its internationalization strategy, Grupo Pistacyl held different meetings with importers from Europe, the United States and South America on July the 5^th in Valladolid in order to establish new business relationships that allow it to expand its presence in those markets.

These meetings were part of a “reverse trade mission” organized within the framework of “Valladolid Consolida”, a program promoted by the Agency for Innovation and Economic Development of the Valladolid City Council (IdeVa), CEOE Valladolid and the Chamber of Commerce in Valladolid to reinforce the local businesses in key skills and areas such as marketing, digitization and internationalization.

The mission began in the morning with a welcoming ceremony by the organizing authorities for the participants at the headquarters of the Valladolid Agency for Innovation and Economic Development.

Subsequently, a B2B workshop took place in which, in addition to Grupo Pistacyl, another 15 producers, distributors and SMEs from the food and wine sector of Valladolid also participated, companies from the food sector from the region that are characterized by their quality and technology applied to production processes.

In the afternoon, the Valladolid companies held personalized meetings with importers to present their product, such as natural pistachio, pistachio paste and Desacato wine from the Rueda Denomination of Origin produced and marketed by Grupo Pistacyl.

The Recoletas Atlético Valladolid Pistacyl, a cadet handball team sponsored by Grupo Pistacyl, finished the 2022-2023 season achieving excellent results in all the competitions in which it had participated.

Thus, the “blue mini-gladiators” trained by Álvaro Martínez finished second in the Cadet Championship of Castile and Leon, in an exciting and even best-of-four final held in Valladolid at the end of April.

Their three-goal victory on the last day against the champions, Abanca Ademar León, gave them, in addition to being runners-up, a place to participate in the zone phase of the Spanish Championship, which they finished in second place in Group D in which they played from May 12^th to 14^th in Tarazona.

Added to these stupendous results is the bronze obtained in the Minicopa de España held on May 5^th in Santander and where they had a great participation with three wins and one loss.

In addition to the excellent performance of all the members of the team, the Recoletas Pistacyl season has also stood out for the great role played by its fans, cheering on their team at all times with great enthusiasm and sportsmanship, as has been highlighted by the rival teams and media.

Thanks to this sponsorship, during the 2022-2023 season, the Recoletas Atlético Valladolid Pistacyl players have worn the Pistacyl Group logo on their shirts, in tune with the healthy lifestyle that the company wants to promote through its flagship product, the pistachio, which players have given to their rivals in competitions.

Pistacyl participated in Taste Spain Austria, a food and wine exhibition organized by ICEX in Vienna on May 15 to promote the presence and knowledge of these products in the Austrian market.

This event was aimed at importers and distributors from Austria and, due to its proximity, also from Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia and Serbia, as well as professionals from the food and gastronomy retail trade, hospitality and specialized press.

All of them have been able to learn about the qualities of the pistachio that Pistacyl sells in its natural state, and which stands out for its quality both in size and flavor and other organoleptic properties, qualities that have been highly valued by the attendees.

In addition, Pistacyl presented its natural pistachio paste to foreign professionals, a product made only using pistachio ground in three phases in a stone mill, which prevents it from undergoing temperature changes that alter its properties, and is especially aimed at the field of hospitality.

By participating in this event, Pistacyl reinforces its commitment to internationalization with the aim of exporting 50 percent of its production, mainly to Europe, where it is already present in markets such as Ireland, France, Portugal and Italy.

As part of its commitment to sustainability and to its environment, Grupo Pistacyl has reached a collaboration agreement with the “La Era de las Aves” Zoological Park and Shelter in Fresno El Viejo (Valladolid) for the donation of pistachio destined to feed their animals.

It is the chopped pistachio that remains mixed with the shell after the peeling process and that does not meet the necessary quality for its sale, but is highly suitable for consumption by birds, given its nutritional characteristics.

In addition to collaborating with this center, which has been rescuing and caring for hundreds of specimens of different animal species for more than a decade, the donation prevents the waste of this product and favors its use, in a further step towards the circular economy and sustainable cultivation that is part of the values of Grupo Pistacyl.

The president of Grupo Pistacyl, Alfredo Pérez, was in charge of delivering the first pistachio donation to Enrique Marcos, manager of “La Era de las Aves”, where around 350 animals of 100 species from different continents currently live.

Most of them are animals that have been abandoned or taken in after an accident in their natural environment, although pets also live in the center that, due to various circumstances, can no longer be cared for by their owners.

With all this, the objective of the center is to make the biology and care of species known, through environmental education, and to insist on the importance of conserving animals and the natural environment to protect and preserve our biodiversity.

Grupo Pistacyl took part with its Desacato wine in the fifth edition of ‘Valladolid, Plaza Mayor del Vino’, an event that was held between May 5 and 7 in the Castilian capital and that has confirmed the great reception, this white wine made with Verdejo grapes from the Rueda Denomination of Origin, has received among the public.

Grupo Pistacyl occupied one of the 40 stands that were distributed throughout the main square of Valladolid, where it unveiled the qualities of the third vintage of Desacato, a wine that, like the previous vintage, once again presents a great quality, which was already recognized with a Silver Medal at the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles held in May 2022.

Desacato is a still wine, made in a winery in Puras (Valladolid) through the natural alcoholic fermentation of the must of the white Verdejo grape that comes from the vineyards that Grupo Pistacyl owns in Fresno el Viejo and Pozal de Gallinas, the latter town where The Pérez Heras family is originally from, founder and owner of this family business.

With a production limited to 45,000 bottles, the new Desacato vintage is presented in a moss-colored glass bottle, which gives the wine greater protection against light, and also with a new label design, which, in addition to its characteristic black background, will also be available in a version with a white background for distribution in commercial establishments.

In addition to the Desacato wine, the hundreds of visitors who came to the Grupo Pistacyl stand were also able to taste the pistachio that this family agri-food company grows in Valladolid and sells natural, without roasting and without any type of additives, and which also received great reviews from the attendees.

With more than 90,000 drinks served over the three days, Valladolid Plaza Mayor del Vino has established itself as a benchmark event in the wine sector of the province.

Organized by Foro de Debate with the sponsorship of the Valladolid City Council through “Sociedad Mixta para la Promocíon del Turismo de Valladolid”, the event had the participation of 31 wineries from the D.O Rueda, Cigales, Ribera del Duero, Toro, León and of the PGI Vino de la Tierra de Castilla y León, as well as 9 agri-food companies.