Miller Magazine Issue 107 / November 2018

72 MILLER / NOVEMBER 2018 TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM What are the criteria for the selection of grain sto- rage solutions in a milling facility? How can investors choose the right system? Although we can say in general there are few para- meters to consider such us grain condition, storage time or purpose of the grain, there are not fix parameters or criteria to select for grain storage or milling solution fit for everyone. This is simple to understand when we start to think about customer needs and the multiple profiles we have to work with: 1. Quality: Companies are focused in different levels of quality. This depends of the positioning each com- pany wants to have in the market, the niche of the mar- ket they are looking after or even the law applicably in each country. 2. Weather conditions: We work in 4 continents with many different weather conditions: deserts, tropical, dry and humid, etc. Each of them bring different parameters to keep in mind for the designing for each single project. 3. Product stored and the purpose: Nowadays we store in our silos more than 60 types of products: cereals, pulses, feed, biomass, pellets and granular products for many different sectors: breweries, distilleries, flour mills, feed mill, rice mill, pasta, power production, traders, etc. There are so many options, that stablishing fix criteria for a final solution is not possible. Therefore we end up in what customer needs: Customize solution. What can you say about the innovations and so- lutions that you have brought to the grain and feed industry? What will your R&D department offer to customers in the coming period? Regarding the past years: the market saw the new de- velopments we brought regarding handling equipment, where we developed better solutions focused in safety and longer useful live. The feedback of the market was very good and our sales in handling equipment not only increased but it positioned us in a higher quality level, so we are able now to compete with the biggest and well reputed handling equipment companies. Market also is aware about the new solutions designed for grain storage: insulation systems, anti-condensation technology, designs to avoid mechanical damage in gra- in, ventilation studies, anti-explosion (ATEX) rules, etc. Today we are working in the efficiency of our pro- ducts. Basically continuously asking ourselves and the user of our technology how we can make things better. We do this through several collaborations with customer where we together analyse equipment behaviour, wear and tear of the components, etc. Could tell us Silos Cordobas’ recently finished and ongoing important projects? We are just about to finish of the biggest projects (if not the biggest) in SAARCs countries. It is focused in paddy rice and it has 60.000 tons of storage capacity: following our main philosophy we were the Main Cont- ractor and our scope of supply was complete: design, manufacture, integrate and erect everything above the ground: grain reception, cleaning and drying section, storage and connection to the mill as well as complete automatization. Another one in a different continent it is in Italy, with a total storage capacity of 40.000 tons. Following same as before we supplied the complete project. Then, mo- ving to Africa, in Nigeria we recently finalize 90.000 tons storage project for flour mill. One more example another 80.000 storage tons we did in Russia. Regarding the ongoing projects, we are right now erecting 23 projects worldwide, and giving supervision service during erection in around 18 more. This is a key in our management handled by our Supervision and Ere- ction team. What are your future objectives in your field of operation? Can you tell us about your plans and ex- pectations for years to come? We want to growth, we want to penetrate more in the existing market we are established as well as in countries we did not penetrate yet. We have clear that customer service is a key that is why we are working on improving our services in different countries worldwide: commerci- al, technical supervision, erection and after sales service to be not only in our headquarter but also in several strategic areas. We are already doing that in the offices we have worldwide and we consider this is the next star- ting point for our future plans. Is there anything else you would like to communi- cate to our readers? If they consider this article interesting and they require more information, they just need to contact with us at: www.siloscordoba.com Tel: +34 957 325 165