The Global Miller

February 21, 2018

22/02/2018: A strong show for 2018 IPPE

The 2018 International Production & Processing Expo (IPPE) had 30,678 poultry, meat and feed industry leaders from all over the world in attendance. A total of 1,218 exhibitors showcased the latest technology on more than 521,000 square feet of exhibit space.

The Expo is the world's largest annual feed, meat and poultry industry event of its kind and is one of the 30 largest trade shows in the United States. IPPE is sponsored by the US Poultry & Egg Association, American Feed Industry Association and North American Meat Institute.

There were 7,093 international visitors from 124 countries at the Expo. Canada represented the largest group from a single country outside the US with 1,132 visitors. Latin America represented the largest region with 2,759 visitors.

Image credit: IPPE

“The turnout for the 2018 IPPE was excellent. With three halls and more networking opportunities, we expect the 2019 IPPE to provide economic value for attendees and exhibitors alike,” the three organisations said.

A week-long schedule of education programs helped drive attendance and updated industry professionals on the latest issues, as well as complemented the exhibit floor. This year’s educational line-up featured 140-plus hours of sessions, ranging from a conference on preventing and responding to foreign material contamination incidents, to a program on feed production education, to a program on biosecurity for poultry and egg producers and live operations.

Next year’s International Production & Processing Expo will be held February 12-14, 2019, at the Georgia World Congress Centre in Atlanta, Ga.

Show updates and attendee and exhibitor information will be available on the IPPE 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.

For additional daily news from milling around the world: global-milling.com

22/02/2018: The Mills Archive Trust wins national lottery support

The Mills Archive Trust in Reading has received £95,300 from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) for an exciting project, ‘Succession Breeds Success”

Made possible by money raised by National Lottery players, the project focuses on transforming the charity in three strategic areas so that the rare UK milling records they care for continue to be preserved and freely available for generations to come.

The project will build on the Mills Archive’s existing successes, focusing on the areas of governance, management, and fundraising. The project will provide the tools to make the organisation resilient so that it can continue to provide educational services for the benefit of the public.

The funding comes from a new HLF grants programme called Resilient Heritage. This programme offers grants of £3,000-£250,000 to help strengthen organisations, and build the capacity of staff and volunteers to improve how heritage is managed in the long term.

The Mills Archive is a charity and accredited archive. It preserves and makes freely available some three million images and documents recording the nation’s important milling heritage. These records capture the whole history of milling, from ancient querns used thousands of years ago, to traditional wind and watermills and up to present-day modern mills. Often, these records are all that remain of a mill and without them, this significant part of the UK’s rich heritage and the memories would be lost forever. The Archive depends on volunteers who work tirelessly to catalogue the material. Many of these volunteers are students enrolled on the Archive’s work experience programme, gaining vital skills to help them on their career path into heritage and charity work.

Commenting on the award, Liz Bartram, Director of Programmes & Development said, “We are delighted to have received this support thanks to National Lottery players. We are confident that with this funding, we will transform what we can achieve as a charity and ensure that these precious records are preserved now and for future generations”.

About the Mills Archive Trust
The Mills Archive was set up in 2002 by a group of volunteers, determined to rescue and preserve for free public use records of milling heritage. The need for this specialist resource has been confirmed by the more than 3 million records we now hold and the 75,000 visitors each year to our website. In the course of building this repository we have raised and spent well over £1 million, trained and retained a professionally qualified archivist and built the country's largest library devoted to mills and milling. In November 2016 the National Archives appointed us as an accredited archive service, recognising our standards of collection care. We are proud of our relationship with our community; not only are we providing a service for the public and subject enthusiasts, we have for the last 10 years been running a successful work experience programme for local graduates.

Visit the Mills Archive Trust website, HERE.

About the Heritage Lottery Fund
Thanks to National Lottery players, we invest money to help people across the UK explore, enjoy and protect the heritage they care about - from the archaeology under our feet to the historic parks and buildings we love, from precious memories and collections to rare wildlife.

Visit the Heritage Lottery Fund website, HERE.

22/02/2018: Financial Times – Future of Agriculture

by Tom Blacker, Milling and Grain

On Tuesday October 10, 2017, in Grosvenor Square, central London, the inaugural Financial Times – Future of Agriculture conference to engage the high-level and strategic high-level executives in the agriculture industry

The international array of attendees was drawn from all areas of agriculture and food industries, market trading, organisations and industry services such as legal and insurance firms.

The conference programme’s welcome letter given by James Gunnell, Managing Director of The Financial Times. Gunnell highlighted advances in technology in the ‘Agricultural Internet of Things’ and ‘Precision Farming’. Despite being buzzwords of the day, these turned into themes discussed at length throughout the day with divergent opinions on solutions and predictions made by many of the speakers.

The opening speech was from the conference’s Co-Chair Andrew Jack, Head of Curated Content, Financial Times who was happy to see a good amount of people and looked forward to the day’s agenda, whilst introducing the Keynote speaker.

The Keynote address was made by Daniel J. Gustafson, Deputy-Director General of the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organisation. He opened with detailing the goals of Agenda 2030 to meet the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs), which in brief are:

1) To reduce poverty worldwide.
2) To reduce hunger and create sustainable food production.

Gustafson also added that the equally important goal of 50 percent more food production is set as a target by the UNFAO 2050 on top of these two goals.

Even though Gustafson stressed these large challenges, he was optimistic and gave an account of his experience and interesting examples from around the world. Gustafson highlighted how unreported stories of success in agricultural production are not being made well known.

For example, between 1960-2015, the agricultural production doubled worldwide. Another example is how between 1997 to 2014 in Brazil, there was a 280 percent yield increase and a 320 percent production increase of all food and India doubled its yield and production of agriculture.

Gustafson went on to analyse the role of macro-economic factors affecting the progress of agriculture. It is apparent that in the majority of the world today, the income growth is at an average of five percent. He added that this rate is changing especially due to population growth rates slowing and the rise of ‘middle-income’ countries. Expanding on these points in detail, he noted, demographic data shows that it is possible the global population growth has past ‘peak-child’ birth rates and a slower rate is likely to be followed by a plateauing out.

Read the full article, HERE.

Behlen Grain Systems company profile

Behlen Mfg. Co. is a leading international manufacturer of grain storage systems. These structures are used worldwide in a multitude of locations storing a wide variety of grain.

Behlen bins range in size from a few thousand bushels to over 1,500,00 bushels.

The Behlen grain storage buildings can be custom designed for many applications.

The entire line of Behlen equipment can be manufactured to handle high winds, seismic conditions, as well as high filling and unloading rates.

Visit the website HERE.

The Global Miller
This blog is maintained by The Global Miller staff and is supported by the magazine GFMT
which is published by Perendale Publishers Limited.

For additional daily news from milling around the world: global-milling.com

February 20, 2018

21/02/2018: User-friendly moisture testing according to the drying chamber method

With particular high precision, the Brabender Moisture Tester MT-CA provides an individual and serial determination of the water and solvent content of different kinds of sample material, such as flour, grain, starch, bread, noodles/pasta, cocoa, chocolate, tobacco, coffee, spices, herbs etc.

Why is this important?

- Moisture is an indicator of storability of different materials, such as grain and flour. High moisture content attracts mould, bacteria, and insects. Wheat or flour with low moisture content is more stable during storage
- Determining moisture content is an essential first step in quality analysis (e.g. of grain and flour), since this data is used for other tests
- Flour millers adjust the moisture in wheat to a standard level before milling

Brabender Moisture Tester MT-CA
Image credit: Brabender

How is the test performed?
- The pan with the sample material is weighed and put onto the positioning wheel
- By using the principle of the drying chamber with moving air, the sample is dried and re-weighed at the end of the test
- The instrument determines the moisture content by the loss in weight of the sample material which results from drying. It can be displayed as a percentage or in a drying curve.
- Additional samples can be put into the drying chamber at any time, even if there are other samples still drying

What are the benefits?
- Measuring principle based on the internationally recognised drying chamber method
- High accuracy of 0.1 percent (values between 99 percent can be recorded)
- Efficiency: Measure up to 10 samples at a time
- New browser-based software MetaBridge for tracking measurements from any end device and location, at any time and by several users simultaneously - Large touch screen (external screen can be connected alternatively)

For more information visit the Brabender 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.

For additional daily news from milling around the world: global-milling.com

21/02/2018: FEFAC welcomes commission initiative to launch European protein plan

FEFAC welcomes the announcement by European Commissioner for Agriculture & Rural Development Phil Hogan to launch a market report and the stakeholder survey linked to the European Protein Plan, first announced at the XXVIII FEFAC Congress in Cordoba in June 2017

The European compound feed industry represents the largest user of plant proteins grown in Europe and imported from third countries. FEFAC members look forward to providing their animal nutrition expertise and economic impact assessment throughout the survey period and during the planned thematic DGAGRI workshops.

www.fefac.eu

FEFAC members will highlight the need for consistency across different EU policies which directly and indirectly affect the EU protein supply, including the CAP “post 2020” framework, the current review of the EU policy on renewable energies (REDII), the Circular Economy package& EU Resource Efficiency agenda 2030.

FEFAC stresses the need to focus on the competitiveness of home grown plant protein sources in the market study, noting the importance of EU cereal and oilseeds production as the key source of vegetable proteins in EU feed use as highlighted in the new EU protein balance sheet. The nutritional expertise provided by the feed industry allows to make the most resource efficient use of available protein sources responding to the physiological requirements of the EU farm animal population, minimising nutrient losses.

This has led to a decrease of crude protein levels on monogastric feed by app.3 percent over the past two decades (to an average of 15.5 percent in pig finisher diets), by improving the digestibility and quality of plant protein sources.

FEFAC considers additional research efforts are needed to raise both yields and protein quality of EU plant protein sources (amino-acid profile and anti-nutritional factors), including oilseeds. European research programmes are crucial to increase the efficiency of protein production and consumption by farm animals (digestibility).

At the same time, FEFAC reminds all stakeholders on the need to set realistic targets for EU plant protein production as the EU will not become self-sufficient for its needs in protein-rich feed materials on the short or medium-term.

In the interest of the sustainable development of European livestock farming, a comprehensive responsible protein supply chain framework needs to be developed to ensure that both imported protein-rich feed materials (mainly soybean meal) and home grown protein sources are produced responsibly, meeting GAP, environmental and social standards.

The FEFAC soy sourcing guidelines launched in 2015 in partnership with ITC, provide an independent benchmark system for famer-owned and other supply chain partner programmes for the production and distribution of responsibly produced soy products.

Visit the FEFAC website, HERE.

21/02/2018: Microwave blocked chute detection system improves animal feed production

by Hycontrol, UK

Hycontrol’s Microsense microwave-based blocked chute detection systems are playing a critical role at a major animal feed plant in the UK. The Microsense installations provide the early detection of product bridging on feed production vessels, resulting directly in significantly reduced cleaning requirements and improved production.

Image credit: Hycontrol UK

During the manufacturing process, animal feed pellets are produced by mixing dry powder product with molasses and steam. This combination produces a challenging product to manage and periodic bridging across the chutes of the process vessels is inevitable. Without an effective way of detecting the start of a blockage, the process continues until the chute becomes completely blocked. This then requires a time-consuming cleanup procedure, resulting in loss of production time and product wastage, together with additional costs from wasted energy for the unnecessary steam production.

Given the challenging characteristics of the materials involved in the feed manufacturing process, any control system for these applications has to be non-intrusive. Probes or sensors mounted within the chute would rapidly become coated in process material and rendered ineffective. In addition such sensors can be prone to damage during routine cleaning.

The manufacturer had already tried several different measurement technologies to resolve the problems, but without success. However, based on their successes in similar difficult applications, Hycontrol engineers were confident their innovative Microsense system would provide a practical solution. As a result, it was agreed to set up a trial on one of the chutes to provide an early warning of when bridging starts to occur.

Microwave technology in level measurement has previously been regarded as unreliable, due to the low signal strengths over distance. By comparison, Hycontrol's range of Microsense microwave level switches are based on a new generation of sensors utilising superior heterodyne detection methods. The technology has the ability to obtain a proportional output to the power received, a distinct advantage over older, unreliable diode microwave sensors. The result is an increase in operating range up to 40 metres and far superior product penetration, all without having to increase power.

The switches are simple to install and set up, offering a safe, non-contact, non-intrusive alternative to expensive nucleonics for many applications on powders, liquids and solids. They have a proven track record and are suitable for demanding applications involving, for example, corrosive, high dust, gaseous or vibration environments.

The Microsense system utilises a matched pair of devices, consisting of a transmitter sensor and a receiver sensor. During operation the transmitter emits a continuous, safe low-power microwave beam and the output relay of the receiver ‘head’ is energised or de-energised by the beam being obstructed by material. This has the obvious advantage of being completely non-contact – a distinct advantage when dealing with a sticky, difficult product like molasses and damp powder.

Read the full article, HERE.

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