by
Alexander Waugh, Director, nabim
Why does flour milling matter at all?
You have a snapshot of the UK, which is what I know best. We can see that flour milling is really at the heart of our food culture in the UK.
An awful lot of the foods that people in our country eat every day have flour at their core. For example, we purchase; 150 million slices of bread, five million biscuits, and 4.5 million portions of cakes, buns etc., and two million pizzas, all of which are made from British flour and bought every day.
The UK is a country of about 60 million people, and we’re using about 11,000 tonnes of flour every day, every year. So it’s quite a big deal! It’s also important as a source of nutrients, it’s as big of a source of fibre as vegetables and fruit combined, it is easily the biggest source of non-dairy calcium, it has many minerals, vitamins and proteins and is also low in fat and low in sugar.
So you can see that an awful lot of things come from flour, not just energy to keep us going. Yet, we have a lot of people saying that flour, especially white flour, is the devil’s food and we shouldn’t be eating it.
We know that actually the picture is not like that, and it’s much more subtle and much more valuable than people realise. So really, it’s bang on trend! But perhaps we have a job to do to market ourselves a bit better.
With UK flour milling, we have the significance of capacity utilisation, mills in the UK are generally running at between 156-160 hours per week, so there is not much down time. Production throughout the year varies a little bit, so capacity tends to be structured to fill the peak time, which is in the autumn.
Nevertheless, it’s a pretty tight ship and the mills are generally both close to people and wheat. So a bit unusually in the UK we tend to take wheat directly to the flour mill, 66 percent of our wheat will have come completely from a farm without having gone through a central store, and the rest will either be imported or come through a central store – it is a little bit of different model perhaps to flour milling around the world. The average production is at 80,000 tonnes per year and wheat usage is at roughly 5.5 million tonnes per year.
nabim: “The subject at hand”
So nabim, which is where I come from, is the trade association for flour milling, we’re representing about 99 percent of production in the UK. We also have a group of associate members which are the businesses which are allied to flour milling, so whether that’s a grain supply or packaging manufacturers, machinery manufacturers, or plant breeders.
There is a very good connection between the flour milling business upstream to our grain suppliers and plant breeding as well as downstream to baking. Our association is active in a lot of activities, regulatory affairs, relations throughout the supply chain, consumer promotion work, health and safety and also training, bringing us to the subject in hand.
Read the full article, HERE.
Why does flour milling matter at all?
You have a snapshot of the UK, which is what I know best. We can see that flour milling is really at the heart of our food culture in the UK.
 |
| Alexander Waugh |
An awful lot of the foods that people in our country eat every day have flour at their core. For example, we purchase; 150 million slices of bread, five million biscuits, and 4.5 million portions of cakes, buns etc., and two million pizzas, all of which are made from British flour and bought every day.
The UK is a country of about 60 million people, and we’re using about 11,000 tonnes of flour every day, every year. So it’s quite a big deal! It’s also important as a source of nutrients, it’s as big of a source of fibre as vegetables and fruit combined, it is easily the biggest source of non-dairy calcium, it has many minerals, vitamins and proteins and is also low in fat and low in sugar.
So you can see that an awful lot of things come from flour, not just energy to keep us going. Yet, we have a lot of people saying that flour, especially white flour, is the devil’s food and we shouldn’t be eating it.
We know that actually the picture is not like that, and it’s much more subtle and much more valuable than people realise. So really, it’s bang on trend! But perhaps we have a job to do to market ourselves a bit better.
With UK flour milling, we have the significance of capacity utilisation, mills in the UK are generally running at between 156-160 hours per week, so there is not much down time. Production throughout the year varies a little bit, so capacity tends to be structured to fill the peak time, which is in the autumn.
Nevertheless, it’s a pretty tight ship and the mills are generally both close to people and wheat. So a bit unusually in the UK we tend to take wheat directly to the flour mill, 66 percent of our wheat will have come completely from a farm without having gone through a central store, and the rest will either be imported or come through a central store – it is a little bit of different model perhaps to flour milling around the world. The average production is at 80,000 tonnes per year and wheat usage is at roughly 5.5 million tonnes per year.
nabim: “The subject at hand”
So nabim, which is where I come from, is the trade association for flour milling, we’re representing about 99 percent of production in the UK. We also have a group of associate members which are the businesses which are allied to flour milling, so whether that’s a grain supply or packaging manufacturers, machinery manufacturers, or plant breeders.
There is a very good connection between the flour milling business upstream to our grain suppliers and plant breeding as well as downstream to baking. Our association is active in a lot of activities, regulatory affairs, relations throughout the supply chain, consumer promotion work, health and safety and also training, bringing us to the subject in hand.
Read the full article, HERE.
Visit the nabim website, HERE.
The Global Miller
This blog is maintained by The Global Miller staff and is supported by the magazine Milling and Grain
which is published by Perendale Publishers Limited.
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