Miller Magazine Issue: 119 November 2019

53 COVER STORY MILLER / NOVEMBER 2019 12 - 14 November 2019 InterContinental Geneva, Switzerland globalgrainevents.com/geneva Keynote address already confirmed by DAN BASSE , giving you his 12-month forecasts NEW: Digitalisation Workshop day looking into all factors and impacts of digitalising trade Get the Super Early Bird rate & SAVE MINIMUM £400 ALTERNATIVES TO GRINDING? The basic principle of grinding has stayed the same for thousands of years: Kernels of grain are crushed into powder between two hard surfaces. Is it really possible that humans, as innovative as they are, have not yet discovered an alternative to grinding? Our researchers have tested alterna- tives over the past decades and developed them to market maturity. But neither the use of lasers or ultrasound have brought the lab test results even close to the pulverizations methods used today, and they were certainly not superior. Even a chemical approach using enzymes to dissolve the bran and crush the endosperm was proven to be less promising. SELF-OPTIMIZING There is still biotechnology. The biotechnologi- cal conversion of wheat directly into bread or pasta is conceivable but still open for implemen- tation. I personally don’t think that consumers are ready to eat such bread or pasta. The trend, in fact, seems to be moving in the opposite di- rection: Consumers want their bread as a natu- ral product with as few unnatural ingredients as possible. For us mill builders, this means that we need to continue developing today’s milling technology to make it highly efficient, compact, economical and easy to maintain and to create mills that can monitor and optimize the process themselves. But experienced millers will never be redundant, even in such a modern mill. The miller will be the one who needs to determine the efficiency of production using his abilities and knowledge. And our plants will be there to offer increasingly resourceful support for his tasks.