Biopek - Gibellina (TP) - Sicily

Caseificio Biopek is located in Gibellina Nuova in the hinterland of Trapani, Sicily, one of the homelands of sheep's milk cheese: the company exclusively processes Sicilian sheep's milk. Biopek tells the story of the Messina family, a genuine story that has its roots in a small workshop run by Giuseppe Messina where sheep's milk cheeses purchased from local producers were matured and packaged. In 2000, his sons Pietro and Andrea joined the company, and the new production plant was built, further expanded in 2019. Every day, three proprietary vehicles collect 200 quintals of milk between the provinces of Trapani, Palermo and Agrigento in a radius of about 70 km from the dairy. The deliverers are 80 small farmers located in mountainous and inaccessible areas, who raise flocks of up to 200 sheep. Given the rural nature of so many breeders, the milk collected is pasteurised and cleaned by centrifugation and then processed in two multi-purpose vats to make a wide range of pecorino cheeses: from primo sale to ricotta, from "canestrati" to refined. All cheeses are salted in brine, in a room adjacent to the cheese factory, for different periods of time depending on the cheese size. Then, the maturing process takes place in different cells for the primo sale cheeses, which become ready in about ten days, and in a cell in the historical part of the dairy for the semi-mature and mature cheeses. The latter fully express the Sicilian identity of the sheep's milk cheese, so much so that the brand name designed for these references is I Siciliani'