Production Process

A More Detailed Process Here

The Milling Process
Flour milling predates agricultural production and is the oldest of the fully automated food processes.

NAMILCO imports wheat from the United States of America. It arrives in Guyana by ship or barge and is off-loaded at the mill’s jetty. Here it is vacuumed from the cargo hold of the vessel by huge pipes (shown below), which transfer the wheat to a conveyor belt, which carries it to the mill’s silos.

 

 

Before the milling process begins the wheat is cleaned, scoured and tempered. In the

Tempering Process the moisture content of the wheat is increase to the optimum condition for milling. After the wheat has been in the tempering bins for up to 24 hours (depending upon variety), the milling process begins.

 

Above: New 1200 metric ton Storage Silo

 

As it enters the mill, wheat first enters the

Break System. This consists of a series of corrugated steel break rollers, which crush the wheat and gradually scrape the endosperm from the bran resulting in Middlings. The finer fractions of the middlings are graded in the sifting process by size and are sent on to the

Purification System. Here machines called Purifiers take out as much of the bran particles as possible in the interest of producing the whitest flour. The results are then fed to the Reduction System. This contains a series of smooth steel rollers through which the purified middlings are fed, according to their particle size and purity. After each reduction passage the resulting flour is removed by sifting in the final stage of the process called

 

 

 

Above: Roll calibration in the break System

The Flour Dressing System. In this system the ground stocks are separated on finely-woven nylon seives in machines called Plansifiers. Any material not fine enough to sift through as flour is sent back to the appropriate part of the system for further processing. The whitest flours are made from the purest stocks of the early passages through the reduction system.

Because white flour is required by the baking industry it is common practice to bleach flour immediately after it comes from the mill. This is done by the addition of a gas or powder which oxidizes the carotene pigment. White refined flour is also enriched with iron, folic acid, niacin, thiamine and riboflavin which were partially lost with the removal of the bran in the refining process.

Approximately 75% of the whet is recovered as flour. The by-products of milling process are called Millfeeds. They are used as animal food. Another by-product is wheat germ-the embryo of the wheat seed, which is often produced for human consumption. It is rich in B vitamins, vitamin E and protein.