F
Altering the mix to meet changing demands in storage and processing facilities
T
by Roger Gilbert, Publisher, Milling & Grain
rading conditions for one of Italy’s leading storage and feed equipment companies is changing, with a shift from traditional sales areas of Eastern Europe and North Africa, to the Middle East, Central Africa and South America, in the past four years. “Our brand of storage is a strong area, especially in industrial plants for feed and oil extraction and in grain-handling at ports, with the scope of adding support equipment such as conveyors, elevators and electrical panels,” says Engineer Andrea Nardo, Chief Technical Officer at Mulmix Spa in Italy. Crushing plants for soy and sunflower is particularly suited for this company’s product range and “this is much appreciated by our customers and supports the customer with an entire construction.” The company works, not only in the industrial and storage side of grain and cereal processing, but also in feed and seed processing. On the feed side of the business, revamping existing installations, which have restricted handling equipment of between 100-150 tonnes/hour, are being increased, in order to optimise production flows for today’s businesses, he adds. “There are lots of these facilities in countries, like Romania and the Ukraine, that were built in the 1970s-80s, without good capacity to transfer grain.” Mr Nardo says the move to upgrade production facilities started 10 years ago, with a change in handling conveyors. The company says revamping old concrete silos, for instance, is very common across Europe and in Eastern Europe. “We are increasing the capacity of plants, but also ports and port installations as well.” Future markets are already being explored by the company, and they include, in particular, Asia and the 54 | March 2019 - Milling and Grain
Industry and World Food Programme install emergency grain storage facility for Africa In 2010, the company was invited by the FAO to discuss a World Food Programme for storage facilities in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa and which was put out for tender in 2014. Mulmix successfully tendered for the project and was awarded five years after its first discussion in Rome. The company installed four 24-metre (m) diameter-35m tall silos, with two independent bucket elevators and a double line of Redler chain conveyors, with double loading at 250 tonnes per hour and four bagging lines for delivery to trucks. This is the first cereal storage plant implemented by the United Nations and the first in Djibouti where, until now, all cereals had been imported in bags. The storage plant, which operates 24 hours a day and 365 days per year, acts as a collection and sorting centre for all cereals arriving at the port. Perishable products are temperature controlled. Cereal leaves the facility in 50kg bags and is transported by trucks to countries facing economic difficulties and famine. In addition to the four silos, there are four reception pits, four automated bagging lines with a capacity of 800 bags per hour. There is a logistics centre to co-ordinate shipments and reception of materials and an on-site training facility. The facility has up-to-date and independent mechanical, electrical and software systems and is set up to minimise energy consumption requiring only an 850kW installation to operate the entire facility. This facility, supplied as a turnkey solution by Mulmix, means ships arriving can be unloaded quickly. The facility was inaugurated in September 2017 and is fully functional today. “We are very proud of this project and hope we can work again with WFP in the future,” says Mr Nardo. Founded in 1962 the World Food Programme is the UN’s leading agency in the fight against hunger. Hunger is the main emergency following a crisis and the WFP is reaching some 80 million people. The WFP has 30 ships, 50 aircraft and 5000 trucks in continuous service and all stocked with food to respond to emergencies. A prompt response is essential. Today the WFP and the UN own the first seed and cereal storage plant based in Africa for delivering humanitarian aid.