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Grain & Feed Milling Technology is published six times a year by Perendale Publishers Ltd of the United Kingdom.All data is published in good faith, based on information received, and while every care is taken to prevent inaccuracies, the publishers accept no liability for any errors or omissions or for the consequences of action taken on the basis of information published. ©Copyright 2010 Perendale Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior permission of the copyright owner. Printed by Perendale Publishers Ltd. ISSN: 1466-3872

Digital Re-print - November | December 2011 African advances

www.gfmt.co.uk

Techmach Technology of South Africa aspires to be Africa’s leading general engineering company in the

Agri sectors. It is building on its longstand-ing activities in cereal milling, animal feed milling and seed processing complemented by its diverse know-how in other related fields such as grain handling and plastic separation by optical colour sorting.

Techmach carries out the design, manufac-ture and commissioning of individual machines or complete plant on a turnkey basis in these and related sectors from its 10,000 square metre site in Chamdor, 30km West of Johannesburg – an area once famed for its gold mining but now more for its food processing and light engineer-ing activities.

Under the leadership of the second genera-tion of its founders, Techmach, having invested more than 16 million Rand ( US$1.0 = SA Rand 7.9) in its facilities, now has a turnover of over 150 million Rand and employs over 100 personnel at its main site as well as a further 20 in the field.

Juan-Paul Farinha disclosed that “We have been able to double our turnover in five years by substantial investment in our design and workshop facilities and by acquiring new skills and developing new equipment and processes both in-house and with our overseas partners.”

The strength of the business is underpinned by its longstanding partnership agreements with ‘blue chip’ manufacturers; Cimbria in Denmark and Austria, for seed and cereal cleaning and materials handling; Satake in Europe and Japan for cereal milling and optical colour sorting; Andritz Feed & Biofuel in Denmark for animal feed milling; Meyer Machines in the USA for specialist bucket elevators and Balaguer in Spain for rollermill rolls.

Maize and wheat provide the staple diet for the growing population of South Africa which, partly due to continu-ing cross-border immigration,

now approaches 50 million. For 2011, maize plantings are estimated to be 2.5 million hectares to produce a crop of 11 million to 12 million

tonnes of which four to five will be available for export.

Over 75 percent of the planted area was devoted to genetically modified varieties. The quality is likely to be variable this year due to unseasonal rains in the harvest period.

In the year to March, nearly 4.2 million tonnes was processed for human consumption of which over 3.8 was of white varieties (source SAGIS).

In contrast, the wheat crop for 2010 at 1.5 million tonnes was well down on previous years and thus imports, at world market prices, will be required to provide the balance of 60 percent, to meet domestic demand.

The deregulation of the wheat and maize sectors has opened up opportunities for both consolidation within the major millers and the introduction of smaller plants in rural areas.

Maize millingThe Techmach/Satake degerming system has

effectively revolutionised maize processing for human consumption in the region and, since its introduction in 1998, more than 100 of the core VBF degermer systems, each capable of handling six tonnes/hour, are now in operation. The original pioneers of the system, Allem Brothers of Viljoenskroon in Free State Province, are now investing a further R25 million in another complete production unit to be integrated with their existing plant and raise their capacity by 260 tonnes per day.

Other current major maize projects include a R15 million modular degerming plant for GP Victor in Frankfort and an interesting extruder based system for Tiger Brands in their R20 mil-lion project to produce an instant maize meal breakfast food at five tonnes per hour.

Wheat millingThe deregulation of the milling and baking

industries has resulted in far more consumer choice in terms of variety and quality of baked goods including bread.

Smaller and medium sized milling companies are able to satisfy some of these niche markets thus complementing the larger consolidated groups.

A recent example is Kromdraai in Frankfort who operate a new Techmach engineered Satake PeriTec debranning system and more recently OVK in Clocolan in Free State province who have ordered a 150 tonne PeriTec mill, to be built on a modular basis.

In Windhoek, Namibia, the company is installing a complex flour handling, blending and dispensing system incorporating the new TMS scales to feed a series of pasta production lines and another similar handling system for Bokomo in Olifantsfontein for their new biscuit lines.

Feed millingAnimal feed milling is one of the most

buoyant activities in the agri related field and Techmach are the dominant supplier of plant in this sector. There has been an enormous level of investment by both the major groups and also by some of the smaller operators in the rural areas. This is at least partly as a result in the growth of poultry rearing since the major-ity of poultry feed is grain based. The current bird population is about 154 million which is 40 percent higher than 10 years ago. The aver-age slaughter age for broilers at 1.85kg per bird has been brought down to only 35 days.

Recent projects include a complete turnkey project for VKB in Vrede in Free State Province which is being built in partnership with Andritz Feed & Biofuel and Cimbria to be the most fully equipped ‘state of the art’ feed mill in the region. The Rand 52 million plant will produce 40 t/h of pelleted feed. Another major, (Rand 60 million), feed mill is also being built for De Heus, the Netherlands based company, in Pietermaritzburg in Kwazulu Natal in three phases of which the first is complete, the sec-ond being commissioned and the third in the planning stage. Pioneer Group’s Nova Feeds in Pretoria are adding a second pelleting line

African advances by Bryan McGee, a milling

industry consultant and freelance writer

(bryan@bcmcgee.co.uk)

Grain&feed millinG technoloGy8 | november - december 2011

FEATURE

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together with fat coating and new outloading bins and the Humansdorp Koop are also adding a second pelleting line, this time for high rough-age feed.

As a consequence of this high level of feed mill-ing activity the sales of dies and rolls for the pellet presses is growing at over 30 percent per annum.

Modular millsIn response to the requirement for more eco-

nomical plants, mainly in rural areas, Techmach developed and introduced a Modular Maize Mill concept, incorporating the innovative Satake/Techmach degerming system, in 2008 (World Grain, August 2009). Typically the four preassem-bled modules for cleaning, degerming, polishing

and milling are supplied as a full set or individually for upgrading an existing plant. This has proved to be successful not only within South Africa with over 10 units sold but also further North in equa-torial regions of Africa. Now this same concept has been applied to a PeriTec wheat flour milling system for OVK as described above and more recently to the new 10M animal feed mill.

Deon Cronje, sales director, commented “It has been logical to extend the concept by initiating these new designs since many of our customers wish to apply the very latest plant and technology, get into production quickly and are understandably reluctant to make major invest-ments in non-productive building structures and other non-essential infrastructure.”

Seed processingAlthough seed processing has long been an

important activity in the business, it has recently taken on new significance with the completion of the major turnkey project for Pioneer Hi-Bred International (PHI), a subsidiary of the Du Pont Corporation of America.

This plant, outside Pretoria, which produces transgenic maize seeds to the highest interna-tional standards, was followed by another in northern Zambia, where Techmach have also built a system for Monsanto and now a further plant is to be built near Addis Ababa in Ethiopia.

Other Company projects in sub-Saharan Africa are being executed in Nigeria, Namibia, Mozambique and Swaziland.

Grain&feed millinG technoloGy november - december 2011 | 9

Process technology, machinery, and complete plants for the animal feed industry

ANDRITZ FEED & BIOFUELEurope, Asia, and South America: andritz-fb@andritz.comUSA and Canada: andritz-fb.us@andritz.com www.andritz.com

Lifland, Iceland. A complete pro­cess ing line for animal feed pro-duction. With this greenfield plant (capacity 50,000 t/a), Lifland will cover nearly 60% of total animal feed production in Iceland. The turnkey feed plant star ted pro-ducing in October 2010.

Together, we make it work!

■ New process lines and plants ■ Process equipment upgrades and replacements ■ Spare and wear parts ■ Service and maintenance programs ■ Optimization and support■ Leading technologies ■ Global presence ■ Local service

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As a result these scales are rapidly gaining market share across the industry.

ConclusionsTechmach’s young and energetic manage-

ment, investment in productive equipment and skilled personnel combined with the know-how of their industrial partners have demonstrated an encouraging ability to take the company forward under sometimes dif-ficult trading conditions. They are carving out a niche as leaders in a broad range of activi-ties in the fields of agri-engineering.

machine tools, are able to produce cost effective in-house components and equip-ment to complement the specialist machines that are sourced from its international part-ners.

In this way they can also be more respon-sive to changing market needs.

The CAD designs can be fed directly to the CNC cell for programming the plasma cutters and punch machines without the need for any hard copy drawings.

Here plate can be accurately cut and punched before fabrication after which they are painted by a powder coating process for a durable finish. The precision punched replacement screens, as used in the degerm-ers, after punching and forming are sent to an outside specialist for wear resistant hardening.

Izak van der Merwe, engineering director explained, “Manufacturing and scheduling of

small batches of complex machines or even simple components has been rev-olutionised by the technolo-gy I now have available.”

The significant improvement in compo-nent accuracy achievable by CNC has enabled the company to add to its core product range with new machines such as the versa-tile in-process and bagging scales, called TMS, which are proving competitive in terms of function, qual-ity and cost compared with imported makes.

Colour sortingThe separation of contaminants from

seeds, groundnuts and cereals by optical means has long been a core activity of the company through their longstanding relation-ship with ESM of Houston, Texas, now part of the Satake Group.

The new Evolution RGB machine with its high resolution full colour detection and LED focused lighting has already had a rapid take up with five installations in under four months including one for peanut grading and it is also proving suitable for new applications such as plastics separation.

Manufacturing Although South Africa has a remarkably

open economy, Techmach have found it beneficial to be increasingly self sufficient in terms of manufacturing and, through their major investments in design equipment and

History of Techmach Technology:

Techmach was established in 1979 to pro-vide equipment and engineering services to the seed, cereal and groundnut processing indus-tries. The business expanded in 1999 when we acquired skilled personnel and the intellectual property rights to the food and animal feed businesses of LTA which were in turn derived from its consolidated predecessors, Simon, Thomas Robinson and Macdonald- Forman over more than 50 years.

Key Milestones:1979 Private company founded by

Greg Farinha and two partners.

1985 Greg Farinha takes full control

Acquisition of agency for Heid of Austria which later, on their merger, also encompassed Cimbria of Denmark

1999 Becomes agent for Satake Corporation for cereal milling equipment

Juan-Paul Farinha joins the business

2001 Deon Cronje joins the business

Company converts to (Pty) Ltd

2003 Acquisition of Andritz Sprout agency

2008 Modular maize mill launched

2010 Expansion of buildings, major investment in IT, machine tools and other manufacturing facilities.

120 employees.

2011 Modular wheat flour mill launched- appointment of Izak van der Merwe as engineering director

CAD view of OVK modular wheat flour millCNC machine tool New design and engineering facility

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20111130 - GFMT December.pdf 1 2011/11/30 15:25:33

Grain&feed millinG technoloGy10 | november - december 2011

FEATURE

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Pallet iser motors are constantly starting and stopping, often at the

same rate as the number of units per hour handled. Consequently, there is a lot of braking energy which is converted to heat, usually by mechanical braking, which creates noise and significant wear and tear on all the components and equipment.

The Ehcolo palletiser used to use frequency converters on all its motors, which was OK, but caused significant heat, which would be wasted. However, the new servo controllers are interconnected in KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System), which means that all braking energy is collected and re-used, offering a substantial saving in power consumption.The Ehcolo palletisers, which feature automatic pattern set-up, have been further developed to

offer a higher level of accuracy and increased speed with the servo c o n t r o l u s i n g encoders mounted on all positioning motors. The use of soft start and stop on all motors results in low noise and long equipment life.A n o p e r a t o r friendly 15-inch colour touch screen is used, allowing new patterns to be easily produced by the automatic pattern set-up system. This is achieved by simply choosing the pallet size and keying in the product dimensions. There is a range of possibilities for data communication and standard the control includes a internet router, so that remote control from anywhere is possible.Ehcolo has 14 different models of

palletiser for all types of bags and boxes on all types of pallets, with capacities from 300 – 2500 units per hour.The palletiser is designed for container transport shipment around the world.Assembly at customers site takes only two days, and as all palletisers are pre-tested with products in Ehcolo factory, full production can commence on the third day.Ehcolo are also manufacturing

container bulk l o a d e r s a n d un-loaders.At the Victam Asia 2012 Ehcolo is also introducing to South East Asia complete turnkey p ack ing ( F FS bagging-palletising-wrapping) lines, which has been widely supplied in Europe to animal feed- and fish feed

producers as well as grain- and seed producers.See Ehco lo at the V ic tam Asia 2012 Exhibition 15 – 17 February BITEC Bangkok Thailand

More inforMation:Ehcolo A/SSmedevej 10DK-6683 Fovling

Tel: +45 75398411E-mail: post@ehcolo.dkWebsite: www.ehcolo.com

Next generation green palletisersEhcolo of Denmark has introduced the world’s first fully automatic palletiser, which uses the same technology as hybrid cars to recover energy consumed through braking.

News November - December 2011 NEWS

Grain&feed millinG technoloGy november - december 2011 | 7

Ehcolo is introducing to South East Asia complete turnkey packing (FFS bagging-palletising-wrapping) lines, which has been widely supplied in Europe to animal feed- and fi sh feed producers as well as grain- and seed producers.

As the fi rst and only in the world, Ehcolo is now supplying its palletisers with servo control and a kinetic energy recovery system, which collect all the motors braking energy for re-use, so we can supply the fi rst ”green” palletisers, saving 15-20% compared to othersSee us at the Victam

Asia 2012 Exhibition

15 – 17 February BITEC

Bangkok Thailand

• Products: all bag types and sizes

• Capacity palletisers: types from 300 to 2500 bags per hour

• Turnkey FFS packing lines: up to 1500 bags per hour

• We also supply robot palletisers

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I would like to thank Grain & Feed Milling Technology magazine for the opportunity to write this guest editorial. I’m sure most readers of trade magazines

will have read enough editorials discussing the current financial climate so I’ll skip that part and move onto the opportunities that times like this present to a cereal milling engineering company such as ourselves.

We’ve consistently maintained focus on our goals of developing machines and processes that deliver either improved performance or reduced operating costs; prefer-ably both. Even though investment purse strings are more tightly held than usual we always find that projects that deliver payback will go ahead.

Coupled with the above are ever-improving standards for finished products safety and a large part of our develop-ment has targeted these areas.

Whilst looking at ways to adapt to the current market situation we have also taken the opportunity to look inwardly and see how best we might structure our business to suit.

The last twelve months has been a busy period within the Satake Corporation UK busi-nesses, not only from a sales and business activity point of view, but also due to a re-organisation within the business.

The Satake facilities here in Stockport accom-modates the Satake Cereal Milling business cov-ering the UK, mainland Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The Vision Systems business shares the same facilities and covers the same territory for sales and service of colour sorting equipment.

With effect of April 2011 the Satake Corporation Directors confirmed the amalgama-tion of the Cereal Milling and Vision Systems (formerly ESM Ltd) under the new company name of Satake Europe Ltd.

As part of this re-organisation Satake Europe became a member of the Satake USA Group of Companies, all of which are 100% owned subsidiaries of the Satake Corporation.

This amalgamation has proved to be a very positive move as it allows full inter-change of skills and experience between the Cereal Milling and Vision operations enabling customers to benefit from the broader technical and project engineering capability.

Vision customers now have the opportunity to have a fully engineered solution to meet their project requirements.

Colour sorting equipment is an important requirement within processes which are handling products such as nuts, pulses, beans, seeds, cere-als and even plastic pellets.

The sorting machine technology is continually improving to deliver ever higher machine capacities with ever improv-ing product separation accuracy required by customers.

The new Satake ‘Evolution’ range of colour sorters demonstrates this continual technical advance and delivers the results required.

For cereal milling the use of colour sorting equipment as part of the grain cleaning process continues to increase and proves to be commercially beneficial when higher quality grains are being processed.

In addition colour sorters provide an additional layer of protection with their ability to remove imperfect raw material and foreign objects.

Cereal processing industries have continually increasing demands put upon them and in turn they look to suppliers to help provide solutions to meet such needs.

The need to provide the right solution and an economic solution becomes more important year on year.

At Satake Europe we endeavor to keep a close eye on the industries we serve with a view to understanding customer requirements and being able to respond to cur-rent and future needs.

We look forward to a continued relationship with GFMT and hope readers will enjoy and learn from the articles in this issue and the news of developments around the world.

Guest

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Guest editor - David Webster, Satake

Improved performance or reduced operating costs;

preferably both

Grain&feed millinG technoloGy

2 | november - december 2011

GFMT11.06.indd 2 30/11/2011 17:28

Perten Instruments A m e r i c a s h a s formed a Process

Instrumentation Department to meet the needs of its on-line/in-line analysis customers.

Perten Instruments, Inc. responsible for sales and support in the Americas is pleased to announce the formation of a dedicated Process Instrumentation Department. Ralph Hewitt Manager-Process Instrumentation, heads the process instrumentation group. Ralph’s experience includes various roles in plant operations and QC management at large grain processing and food processing facilities with companies such as Cargill, ADM and Pinnacle Foods. The group includes Brian S c h u l t e t u s , p r o d u c t s p e c i a l i s t s y s t e m s i n t e g r a t i o n , D a r i n Crossland product specialist applications development, and Magnus Nilsson product specialist hardware and customer care. In addition to the dedicated staf f , Perten Instruments has spent much of the past 18 months establ ishing a network of vendors capable of assisting Perten in responding to the needs of their customers. T h e d e p a r t m e n t ’ s

functions and mandates inc lude s i te eva luat ion visits, installations, systems integration, applications development, training, and support. The group’s initial focus is on the Per ten diode array based near-infrared (NIR) process analysers. The group will continue to expand as new process instrumentation is added to the Per ten product portfolio. Many new advances in product development are scheduled for release in 2012. “Process instrumentation is one of our largest areas of growth” reports Gavin O’Re i l l y, Pres ident o f Perten Instruments, Inc “We are very excited to have this highly qualif ied g ro u p t o s e r ve o u r process instrumentation c u s t o m e r s . ” “ T h e f o r m a t i o n o f t h e Process Instrumentation Department is a further demonstr at ion o f our c o m m i t m e n t t o o u r customers and our mutual success” adds Ralph.

More inforMation:Business Development Manager

Tel: +46 8 880 990Fax: +46 8 881 210 Email: wshadow@perten.comWebsite: www.perten.com

Perten announces formation of a dedicated Process Instrumentation Department

News November - December 2011 NEWS

Grain&feed millinG technoloGy november - december 2011 | 5

THE GLOBAL MILLERI will be blogging the latest news from around the world that relates to the movement, storage, milling and use of all types of grains and cereals for the food and feed industries. To receive my reports regularly why not sign up to this blog directly or follow us on Twitter and Facebook?! - The Global Miller by Martin Little, Blog Editor

http://gfmt.blogspot.com

GFMT11.06.indd 5 30/11/2011 17:28

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A subscription magazine for the global flour & feed milling industries - first published in 1891

In this issue:

• Mycotoxins an overview

• Database for animal diet formulation techniques: A glance to last decade

• Food safetyin the grain milling industry

• Recent advances in rapid grain testing

November - December 2011

• African advances

Animal feed milling is one of the most buoyant activities in the agri related field

• Optical sorting Optical sorting has come of

age and should be considered as a serious option for inclusion in any modern wheat cleaning plant

• Get in lineProcess analysis solutions open new opportunities for improved profit and quality

GFMT11.06.indd 1 30/11/2011 17:28

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