We could not bring everyone to Sicily.
So we brought Castruriali to them.

Pakistan is one of the youngest countries in the world: around two-thirds of its people are under 30, according to the United Nations Development Programme. Across rural Punjab skilled jobs are scarce. In villages such as Dharabi and Balkasar too many young people face a choice between unemployment and leaving their families to look for work in the cities or abroad.

Our site in Dharabi is our answer. It is where every Golden Multan mango is dried, checked and packed by hand, by people from the surrounding villages, trained to the standards the Castruriali Group holds itself to. Keeping people in work close to home and giving them a trade to be proud of is the point of the whole enterprise.

Anyone can do it well, given the resources, the training and the support.

It is also how we hold ourselves to account. Pakistan grows some of the best mangoes and produce in the world; we want to raise the standards around them, bringing British and Italian food standards together with Sicilian craft. It is our social responsibility in practice: proof of what is possible when different cultures combine. The Castruriali Group is a progressive group: we want to push the bounds and change what is possible.

Golden Multan is premium Pakistani dried mango, made by hand in small batches. We deliberately avoid industrial processing machinery. Pakistan is full of hidden gems, among them some of the most talented people we have worked with anywhere. We would rather build a skilled workforce around that talent than hand its work to machines. It is time the world recognised it.

Every mango is peeled, cut, laid out to dry, checked and packed by people, not production lines. It is slower. It is also better: skilled hands notice what a machine never will, from a slice cut a fraction too thick to a batch that needs a little longer.

In the quest to make the best mango product in the world, our founder Yazdaan Hussain and Marco Rappazzo, Agricultural Steward and Head of Castruriali Farms, cut and dry the mangoes themselves. Together they train every member of the team personally, so that each pouch meets the highest standard we know. For Marco it is personal too: he is working to create something special between Sicily and Pakistan, a legacy of his friendship with Yazdaan.

Chakwal is known as the olive capital of Punjab. It sits at the heart of the Potohar plateau, where Pakistani olives are grown and Pakistani olive oil is made. It is where the country is building an olive industry of its own. Pakistan has made olives a national priority, with a goal of 10 million olive trees by 2030. Its federal olive programme is run by the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council with the support of the Italian government. Italy's OliveCulture project is scaling up the whole olive value chain from 2024 to 2027. In Chakwal itself, the Punjab government's Centre of Excellence for Olive Research at the Barani Agricultural Research Institute has bred local varieties such as BARI Zaitoon 1 and 2.

That is what first brought Yazdaan Hussain, Castruriali's director and co-founder, to Chakwal: to consult Pakistani olive farmers and growers, bringing the knowledge and expertise he has built with Antonino Mandanici, Marco Rappazzo and Castruriali in Sicily. Today we work in the region on the research and development of local olive varieties. We help farmers with the problems that hold them back, from olive diseases to grafting and pressing.

About 45 minutes from Islamabad International Airport, Dharabi was the natural base for that work. It became the home of Golden Multan.

Castruriali is 100% made in Italy: Italian craftsmanship held to British standards and expectations. In Pakistan we want to see what its produce can offer when it is dealt the same hand.