Milling & Baking News - October 15, 2013 - 27

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A seismic detector hooked up to the mill’s
control system was designed by Nelson
Rathert, manager of plant engineering for
ConAgra Mills.

were able to get through the project
without any customer complaints.”
A central player in the execution
of the “on the run” approach, Mr.
Allen said, was SCA Construction,
Inc., Independence, Kas., responsible for equipment installation.
“You have to have someone who
is a partner when you sequence
these on the run,” Mr. Allen said.
The project was the fourth of what
Mr. Allen described as a “complete
refurbishment” of a flour mill by
ConAgra Mills in recent years, following major work done by the
company in Saginaw, Texas; Commerce City, Colo.; and in Puerto
Rico. Also in recent years was a
significant project in Alton, Ill., in
which ConAgra updated the roll
floors and made a number of structural enhancements.
As is the case with a number of
U.S. flour mills, the site at Oakland
originally was a grain elevator (dating to the 1920s) and only later was
a flour mill added or, in this case,
repurposed.
Built as a Farmers Coop elevator,
a three-story feed mill was installed
in 1946. The facility was converted
in 1965 by Montana Flour Mills,
which added another two floors as
part of installing the A Mill. The
mill was acquired by ConAgra Mills
in 1967. The B mill was installed in
the mid-1980s.
Even beyond the Oakland mill,
milling industry investment in
California is nothing new. Over
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the last 25 years, there has been
more mill construction in California
than in any other state. New mills
have been built in Colton, Fresno,
San Bernardino and Stockton. As
a result, California has the largest
flour milling capacity in the United
States with 123,800 cwts of daily
milling capacity, according to the
Grain & Milling Annual, published
by Sosland Publishing Co. Kansas
ranks second at 112,400 cwts.
R. Michael Veal, vice-president of
marketing at ConAgra Mills, said
the reason for this investment is
hardly a mystery.
“The California economy is
huge,” he said. “If California were
a country, it would have the ninth
largest economy in the world. It’s
larger than Russia.”
Comparing California with the
rest of the United States is similarly
impressive. Its population of 38 million is equal that of the 22 least populous U.S. states combined.
Not only is California large, it is
getting larger, Mr. Veal said.
“It is growing post recession,
leading the U.S. recovery,” he said.
“Unemployment is declining. Incomes are increasing. There are
more people, more dollars, more
disposable income. The population
of the state is growing at a rate of
350,000 per year.”
As part of the project, structural
additions were made at Oakland
both to handle the heavier equipment installed in the mill and for
earthquake protection, Mr. Higgins
said.
The mill has endured a number of
earthquakes over the years, including a major Bay Area earthquake in
1989 that registered 6.9 on the Richter scale and was responsible for 63
deaths and left up to 12,000 people
homeless.
Following that quake, which damaged the Oakland Bay Bridge and
required a six-year repair project for
the Oakland City Hall, the ConAgra
Mills facility in Oakland (4 miles
from city hall) was operating again
within 24 hours, Mr. Allen said.
In its latest project, a seismic detector was designed and installed
at the mill by Mr. Rathert and

Milling Technology

connected to the control system to
offer further protection.
“The key is to get a mill shut
down quick when a quake hits,” Mr.
Allen said. ”That’s where Nelson’s
innovations are so key. You don’t
want to tear up the sifters.”
The new milling capacity was
installed over the same footprint
within the A mill. This was accomplished in part through the installation of double high Bühler rollstands
(only on first and second break), Mr.
Allen said. Rollstands with 40 inches of milling surface were replaced
with 50-inch rollstands. More generally, milling equipment is being
designed to be more space efficient,
he said.
Another significant source of
space savings was the installation of
more efficient Bühler filters, reducing the number at the mill to 4 from
the 13 sprinkled across the building
previously.
Drag conveyors were supplied
by Tramco Inc., Wichita, Kas., and
blowers by Blower Engineering Inc.,
Aurora, Ont.
Among the most innovative introductions in connection with the
project was the installation of a new
packaging system from Premier
Tech Ltd. The system has the capability to package flour in poly bags.
Matthew C. Huelsman, mill manager, explained that the shift was
anything but simple.
“Flour is not an easy material to
handle,” he said. “There are issues
of dust residue and compaction,
getting rid of the air within the
package. To get volume, you need to
remove air in order to fill it. There
was a lot of engineering around getting the air out and the flour in.”
Mr. Huelsman estimated 70% of
the mill’s output is shipped bulk

Low-density polypropylene bags are efficiently delivered to the Oakland mill in
giant rolls.
Milling & Baking News October 15, 2013 / 27

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Milling & Baking News - October 15, 2013

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