World Grain - January 2013 - 48

FEATURE: MILLERS GATHER IN MIDDLE EAST

IAOM Latin America District holds conference following ALIM
The International Association of Operative Millers (IAOM)
Latin America District held its 36th annual technical conference
Nov. 15-16 in Meridia, Yucatan, Mexico, with more than 50 millers from 11 countries attending the event at the Fiesta American
Hotel. The conference was held immediately following the 30th
annual Latin American Millers Association (ALIM) meeting.
The first day featured a pre-conference workshop on operational processes and applied technologies in grain processing.
Andrea Saturno, president of FUNDAUNIPAP, a management
consulting company, led the workshop.
Among the workshop topics were pre-cleaning, receiving,
tempering, milling and aspiration. The millers took advantage
of the opportunity to ask specific questions about their own
operations and learn more about the various technologies
vice-chairman of U.S. Wheat Associates, touched upon the critical shortage
of ground moisture, particularly due to
lack of snow in much of the central Midwest and especially in his home state.
However, he emphasized that “the U.S.
wheat store is always open,” and he repeated the familiar U.S. Wheat refrain of
“contract sanctity, market competition,
transparent pricing and assured quality,”
as reasons to buy American wheat.
Hughes encouraged the millers of the
region to use higher priced but better
quality wheat from the U.S. to blend with
low-cost wheat from other origins to obtain the best possible price-to-quality mix,
an argument developed in depth by Peter
Lloyd, regional technical director of U.S.
Wheat, during the educational session.
Mark Samson, regional vice-president of
U.S. Wheat, showed his country’s share of
Middle East and Africa wheat imports at
around 5% of a total of 37 million tonnes.
Moving on to Europe, there has been
an increase of exports outside of the
E.U. at the expense of intra-E.U. trade,
noted Francois Gatel, director of France
Export Cereales.
“Wheat is by far the largest crop in
France with about 10 percent of all area,
or roughly 5 million hectares,” he explained. French wheat yield was 7.4
tonnes per hectare in 2012 thanks to “high
spring temperatures, a long growth period
and an oceanic climate with a high spring
temperature but not too hot summer.”
48

available to make operations more efficient.
During the morning of the workshop, IAOM attendees were
able to tour the ALIM expo as well.
The second day of the district meeting featured technical presentations coupled with presentations on new tools and technologies during the “What’s New” session. Presentations were
on the U.S. wheat crop report, durum wheat milling, enhancing
flour baking properties with enzymes, lateral detection of mycotoxins, the importance of laboratories to the industry and key
performance indicators in flour milling.
Attendees had the chance to network during a reception on
the first evening of the event.
The 2013 conference is being planned for Nov. 16-17 in
Lima, Peru.

France ranks number ﬁve as a world
wheat exporter with 11 million tonnes,
half of which went to Algeria and
Morocco in the most recent year.
Glencore trader Joost Viehoff introduced the South American crop situation
which was very unclear at conference
time. Every year a certain share of Argentina’s and Brazil’s wheat exports is delivered to ports in southern and east Africa
and the Middle East. Brazil, at 7 million
tonnes per year, is one of the world’s top
wheat importers, but it nevertheless exported 500,000 tonnes to Iran in 2012.
Viehoff explained that exports are
possible due to the different quality
needed by mills at different times, adding that much of Brazil’s production is
feed wheat quality.
The ﬁrst day, Indrek Aigro of Copenhagen Merchants, Denmark, discussed
how the Baltic region, including the
former Soviet states of Estonia, Latvia
and Ltihuania as well as Poland and
northern Germany, had become a major
wheat surplus zone.
IAOM MEA’s growing emphasis on
management issues came out in the initial
topics of the day. Hedging solutions were
presented by Dr. Abedlatif Abada of Morgan Stanley, UAE. On this theme, Tierney suggested that millers cover some of
their purchase risk with options contracts
whose prices are unexplainably very low
in relation to the current market volatility.
Former GAFTA President Wayne

Bacon gave a talk entitled “The Hidden
Contract,” focusing on the GAFTA 27
rules which form a part of every grain
contract. They are “very seller biased,
so buyers really have to understand
what their risks are.”
Participants were pleased by the continuously reﬁned formula of the conference.
“I have attended since the second
one in Yemen, where there were 200
people,” said Mustafa Mustafa, group
head of milling for Dangote Flour Mills,
Nigeria. “It has been very good for my
professional development as it has kept
me up to date year by year about innovations. I appreciate the addition of managerial issues to the program.”
In his closing remarks, Assimakopoulous of Agthia Group congratulated
IAOM for the “diverse and valuable insights from some of the industry’s most
esteemed and inﬂuential professionals.”
He then handed over the IAOM MEA
banner to the Kamel Belkhiria, president of La Rose Blanche Group, Tunisia, where the 24th annual conference
will take place Nov. 5-8, 2013 in the
Mediterranean city of Sousse.
David McKee’s grain industry consultancy, Key
International LLC, provides market research,
feasibility analysis, technical studies and project
guidance to companies and organizations. He
can be reached at davidmckee59@msn.com.
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inquiries to worldgrain@sosland.com. For reprints of
WG articles, e-mail reprints@sosland.com.

January 2013 / World Grain / www.World-Grain.com

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World Grain - January 2013

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