STORAGE
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Storage project Cargill invests in the first ever bulk storage of corn in India
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by BK Anand, Director, Cargill India and Business Unit Head- Grains and Oil seed Crush, India and Bangladesh ood grains form an important and integral part of the Indian diet. Grain production has been steadily increasing due to advancement in production technology, hence the growing need for scientific storage. Traditionally, India has been known to store grains in gunny bags in covered and open flatbed storage. Over the years, country realised the need for enhance the covered flatbed storage in order to protect the quality and quantity of stored grains from the weather vagaries. This drew the attention of both the government as well as private players and a significant capacity of covered flatbed storage was constructed over the years. With enough covered flatbed storage, the problem of storing large quantities of grains was resolved to a great extent, however the next challenge was to maintain the quality of grains stored and more efficient modernised storage practices. In the year 2004-05, government of India floated pilot project of Bulk Storage Tender and witnessed partial success. Thereon, Bulk Storage started finding its utility for captive usage by the food processing industry where capacity utilisation was guaranteed by their in house processing capacities. As well various provincial governments are also taking up Storage ONLY project under bulk storage by delinking from movement in bulk as well. So far Bulk storage was restricted to only ‘Wheat’ storage and
66 | February 2016 - Milling and Grain
later for premium quality Rice also. Over the years, due to changing eating habits and enhanced food processing capacities, Maize has become a very popular grain with the industry. Growing need and demand for quality maize as a key raw material in the food processing industry has encouraged Cargill to innovate Bulk Storage in Maize. However, Bulk Storage or Silos for Maize have to be customized to address challenges relating to local growing conditions, fragmented supply base and Indian climatic conditions for maize storage in the sub-continent. Cargill will need to make significant technological interventions to make the bulk storage worthy for maize to be stored under tropical climatic conditions. This will be a comprehensive value proposition for farmers, equipment manufacturers, food processors as well as our Indian/Global consumer. To begin with, the first bulk storage facility of 60,000 metric tonnes is being set up by Cargill in Davangere, in the state of Karnataka. This multi-million dollar investment in storage will manage the supply chain for Cargill’s new Corn Wet milling plant in Davangere, Karnataka and also for our customers in poultry and other related industries. In anticipation of the growing demand for good quality corn, Cargill is banking on the Bulk Storage which will help secure corn supply and manage the quality during storage to ensure year best service to our customers. The silos will be ready to store the harvest of 2016.