World Grain - December 2017 - 32

FEATURE: RIEPER FINDS NICHE IN FLOUR, FEED AND BAKING

to give the customers the best possible
service," he said. "We do this by having
great employees and we try to remain
passionate about products. We are keen
on new technical developments."
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on display in Rieper's new mill in South
Tyrol, which is in northern Italy near the
Austrian border. Bühler, which has partnered with Rieper on many projects over
the last 72 years, designed and equipped
the plant, which was commissioned in
2016 and has a 24-hour production capacity of 240 tonnes (wheat equivalent)
per day.
"We moved the good parts from the
existing mill, including the MDDK roller mills, some scales and a peeler, and
SXUFKDVHGWKHQHZHVWSXUL¿HUVDQGSODQsifters," said Alexander Rieper, noting
that it took just eight months for the new
mill to be built and put into operation.
One of the reasons for building the
new mill, Alexander Rieper said, was
that the company wanted to do everything possible to meet the growing expectations in the North Italian market
for food safety and hygiene.
"It starts with the design of the plant,"
he said. "The selection of the raw materials, proper maintenance of the building and equipment and strict quality
control measures are the next steps, and
last but not least you have to keep the
plants clean."
The new Rieper mill grinds hard
32

wheat, soft wheat, rye, spelt and Kamut
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that are sold to large industrial and small
handcraft bakers as well as retail outlets.
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pies, pastries, biscuits and bread.
Once among the world's leaders in
bread consumption, Italy has seen the
amount of bread consumed per capita
fall by nearly 50% over the last 10 years.
Coldretti, a farmer's association, said
that the drop in consumption was coupled with an increase in organic bread,
gluten-free products and those made
with non-wheat grains such as spelt.
Italians still prefer artisan bread, which
represents 88% of the market.
"The Italian market is in search of
GDUNHUÀRXUVZLWKKLJKHUQXWULWLRQDOYDOues," Alexander Rieper said. "We are
constantly developing new products."
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as well as the feed mill, come from
European Union countries, with the majority coming from Germany, Italy and
Austria, Alexander Rieper said.
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processes 145,000 tonnes of grains and
oilseeds, but at any one time it has only
5,500 tonnes of storage space, "so we
have to have a very strong logistics department," Alexander Rieper said.
Although Italy is well known for its
semolina production and pasta consumption - the country leads the world
in pasta consumption at 26 kg per year

Left: Rieper moved these Bühler MDDK roller
mills from its previous mill into the newly built
mill in South Tyrol in 2016.
Right: Alexander Rieper is the managing director
of Rieper S.p.A., which is in its fifth generation of
family ownership.

with product penetration of 99% of
Italian households - Rieper is not involved in durum milling, Alexander
Rieper said.
According to the milling industry
body Italmopa, the Italian milling sector
features about 348 mills. Production of
ÀRXUZKHDWÀRXUDQGGXUXPZKHDWVHPolina amounted in 2016 to 7.751 million
tonnes (including 4.006 million tonnes
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of durum wheat). Italy is a net importer
for durum, hard and soft wheat.
FEED BUSINESS
Rieper's feed mill grinds corn, feed
wheat, soybeans, barley and rapeseed
into formulations for livestock in northern Italy.
The leading feed producer in the
South Tyrol province, Rieper specializes in custom feed mixes.
"All of our raw materials are non-GM
and we have very low limits for mycotoxins," Alexander Rieper said. "With
over 1,400 recipes, we serve 4,000 customers in the feed industry."
Built in 2002, the feed mill, which has
a production capacity of 550 tonnes per
24 hours, is still "one of the most mod-

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