With increasing urbanisation and sophistication in tastes of the average consumer, a lot of foods, especially grains are processed to take the pressure off the hands of the busy home maker. Thus, with Maize Flour one can prepare and have semovita within minutes. With Mealia, fashioned along our desire for traditional morsel food one would have both protein and carbohydrate intake, enough to keep him/her active all day long. And what about Richfil riding its way to meet our increasing nutritional need?
A multi-purpose cereal mill therefore, effectively takes care of maize, sorghum, millet and wheat milling. The point of entry is the sophisticated Panel Room where all the major operations are shown in a simple diagram. Essentially, when the trucks bringing in the grains arrive they wait at the weight bridge for weighing. At the intake section the trucks drop the cereals for pre-cleaning before being sent to the silo through the overhead conveyors to the three bins from the automatic weighers they are elevated to the screening machine which remove the chaff, fine sand and light particles. These machines are equipped with the separation and destoner (which remove the stones).
After screening, the grains are conveyed through the elevators for the conditioning or tempering process. Here, the cleaned cereal grains are dampened with water and left for between 12 to 24 hours. The flo-menter or dampening machine doses the water into the grains. An elevator bears the flour and is sent to the six (3 pairs) of finished products bins. Here we have the Grit bin, Flour Bin and Offal Bin. At the latter the germs are combined with the hull after extraction from the plant sifter.
The machines have the capacity for continuing grits. Packaging concludes the detailed process. In a nutshell, the incoming grains are taken in silos, prepared for milling, milled, stored and bagged.
At the intake the trucks are discharged into the intake pits through underground conveyors and elevators for precleaning to the gravity separators and scanperator. Each of the silos could have a capacity of 2,000 tonnes
For maize milling, normally, after pre-cleaning the rubbish is put back in the truck. The average weight of the truck with the maize should be 30 tonnes. It is the precleaned maize that goes into the silo. It takes 2 to 3 weeks to mill out the silo.
At the laboratory, quality assurance measures are put in place to ensure long shelf life for the grains. The precleaned maize is fumigated along the conveyors to make the grains keep for up to one year. These are recycled every 3 to 4 months for additional fumigation, using the motorized fumigator. Each of the 3 bins has 90 tonnes capacity. The final product, which is Maize Flour is bought like Semovita to make Tuwo to remove the hulls and the endosperm. The small bits of grains are called Hominy Grits at this stage and used by the brewers in the brewery industry.
One fascinating feature of the operations at the flour mill is that all the machines have aspirated fans that generate air with adequate pressure to lift Fine Chaff and dust to be mixed with offal. Some brewery companies buy the grains at this stage while others further grind them to fine grits. The distinction is that the coarse grits are for stout companies while the fine brewery grits go to lager beer companies. Generally, breweries want low- fat grits. The Brabusco is obtained at this point as fine grits but has a little bit coarseness because of the high oil quality. Bornu people and Sudanese cherish brabusco for making of porridge.
For further milling the coarse grits are sent to the Roller Mills. Each roller mill has a gap separating it from the next one but in decreasing width as it progresses from the first roller to the last. The double rollers are 16 in all with 2 types; corrugated (grooved) and smooth (groove less) types.
After every grinding process the products from the mill are lifted preumatically by air to the Plant Sifter. Sifting takes place before grading is done to particle size. There are ten compartments made up of 6 and 4 sizes. The very coarse grains are sent for another round of grinding. The Grit undergoes purification where the fine grits are extracted for breweries.
The Flour has the chaff removed and is sent for redressing and purification. For instance, Mealia product from the flour mill was once launched with the components mixed to contain carbohydrates (from Maize) and protein (from soya beans). Its processes follow a similar pattern with weighing after the mixing. From the hoppers packaging takes place. The flour comes out in the 100kg bag (for sorghum), 50kg and 10kg (for grit and flours).
A multi-purpose flour mill therefore, has the benefits of taking in several grains, such as maize, sorghum, millet, soya beans, groundnut and wheat in their raw material form and transforming them through processing into products of different industrial and economic values. Flours, grits, cornflakes, semovita, tuwo are some of them.
This is one significant area the Ministry of Agriculture at both the federal and state levels should be looking at to generate employment. It is not enough to boost the quantum of the foods, including grains that our farmers produce. The entire value chain must be strengthened with sustained human capacity development and the right application of the requisite modern technology in processing, preservation, packaging and marketing. The time for the use of rudimentary knowledge in agriculture has come and gone. We should be thinking and working towards meeting local demand and even foe export.
For instance, Nigeria would have made much more income from agriculture in the ‘60s if we had added value to our cocoa beans, groundnut, coffee, cashew nuts, maize, millet and sorghum. The time to act is now!
Ayo Oyoze Baje
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