Milling & Baking News - October 9, 2018 - 28

Milling Technology

Star of the West ships 50-lb bags of flour to Arizona, Iowa, Ohio,
Pennsylvania and Ontario.

to being forward thinking on safety and providing quality products, Mr. Michel said.
"We go that extra mile to make sure the
customer is getting what they're looking
for and exceeding expectations," he said.
"We continue to keep our standards high.
Customer service is huge, and we think
we're very good at that."
With the Willard facility, a strong emphasis was placed on automation and cleaning,
to ensure the best finished product.
Wheat is received by truck and rail, and
it is sampled, tested and graded in the receiving building. Falling number and vomitoxin tests are completed before the wheat
enters three GSI corrugated steel tanks
measuring 60 feet in diameter and 117 feet
tall with total storage of 800,000 bus.
Before entering storage, the wheat goes
through magnets from Magnetic Products,
Inc. to remove any ferrous tramp metal,
including iron, steel, fines, rust or scale
from the product stream. From there it is
put through a Bühler 250-tonne-per-hour
TAS 206A-6 LAAB universal pre-cleaner.
Wheat is then moved to concrete storage that consists of four slip-form silos
measuring 33 feet in diameter and 136
feet tall. Each has a capacity to hold about
83,000 bus, and there is an interstice with
a capacity of 24,000 bus. Between the steel
bins and concrete silos, total grain storage
is a little over 1 million bus.
The cleaning house is extensive, Mr.
Pickelmann said, and includes screening
machines, scourers, aspiration machines
and SORTEX color sorters, all supplied
by Bühler.
"You want to get the wheat as clean as
possible," Mr. Michel said. "That helps with
the quality and consistency of your flour."
The wheat is tempered with a Bühler
MOZL dampener turbolizer for 12 to 14
hours, Mr. Michel said. From there, wheat
goes through first break and through a series
of Bühler MDDR single-high Antares and
MDDT double-high Antares roller mills,
Bühler MPAK Sirius 10-section and six-section plansifters and Bühler Polaris purifiers.
28 / October 9, 2018

Milling & Baking News

The Bühler scourer MHXS removes impurities such as dust, sand
and clods of soil that adhere to the grain.

Flour is shipped via pneumatic conveying through an 8-inch pipe to the company's next-door customer or stored in
13 finished flour storage tanks. The bagging station on the first floor of the mill
includes a 10- to 12-bags-per-minute Bühler MWPG bagging station that fills 50-lb
bags. The bags are then palletized using a
robotic stacking system. Germ is shipped
in super sacks or totes weighing 1,750 lbs
,and all middlings are shipped in bulk.
The Willard plant produces pastry flour,
cake flour and cookie flour and milling byproducts, including middlings for animal
feed and food-grade wheat germ. In addition to its customer next door, Star of the
West ships finished product to Arizona,
Pennsylvania, Iowa, Illinois, other locations in Ohio and Ontario, Canada.
Mr. Pickelmann said there are plans
on paper for additional 1 million bus of
wheat storage, and the infrastructure is in
place to build a second flour mill to the
south of the existing mill. The mill would
be similarly sized but may make different
products, he said.
"When they say go, we can put the
numbers together and go," Mr. Pickelmann said, noting there is no timeline for
expanding.
Star of the West is always looking at
projects, he said, and upgrades are needed
at some facilities. The Ligonier mill needs
a cleaning house, and the Churchville facility needs a cleaning house upgrade, a
wheat receiving precleaning facility and
feed loadout. Work is underway on an
automation project in Frankenmuth.
"Once we get that project done, we
have a plan to increase capacity there as
well," Mr. Pickelmann said.
Automation and experience
Along with improved safety features,
the high degree of automation also means
the mill can run with fewer employees.
In Kent, the mill had 24 employees and
produced 400,000 lbs (3,500 cwts) per day,
Mr. Michel said. At Willard, there are 20

employees producing a million lbs per
day. But it's still important to have good
millers who can tie the whole process together, he said.
"You have to have the automation, but
you also have to have the art of milling,"
Mr. Michel said. "You still have to be able
to listen; you still have to be able to smell.
We have one miller who always gets a
sample and takes a smell."
With capable millers and automation,
there's less downtime, Mr. Pickelmann said.
"If you have a choke up, it suspends
the system a lot quicker so you can get it
back up quicker," he said.
Training is stressed at Star of the West,
whether it's cross training within the mill, at
conferences or through university programs.
"The more you cross train and get people to understand the other side of what
they're doing, the better," Mr. Michel said.
Star of the West makes sure employees have an opportunity to further their
education, Mr. Pickelmann said. Prior to
starting the mill, millers made multiple
trips to Bühler's North American headquarters in Minneapolis to learn how to
use the equipment and prepare to operate the mill. The company participates
in International Association of Operative
Millers' district meetings and the international conference, and Kansas State University's correspondence courses.
"We had one miller from our Ligonier
mill go through the Cowley College program set up by I.A.O.M., and two more
are enrolling in that," Mr. Pickelmann
said. "It's been excellent training.
As the industry changes, especially the
ongoing consolidation of milling companies, Star of the West will continue to
keep its standards high and stay involved
in the industry, Mr. Michel said.
"We reach out to keep the quality up and
to exceed the quality expectations," he said.
"To stay competitive, you have to have that
customer service and that growth and continue to keep your standards up." MBN
- Susan Reidy
bakingbusiness.com / world-grain.com

http://www.bakingbusiness.com http://www.world-grain.com

Milling & Baking News - October 9, 2018

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