Miller Magazine Issue: 131 November 2020

70 TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM MILLER / November 2020 gy and a strong technical team. THE HEART OF STERN: TECHNOLOGY CENTER Research and development are part of Stern-Wy- wiol Gruppe. What kind of work is your R&D team currently doing for the future? Yes, R&D in our broad-based application and re- search facility Stern-Technology Center – Futuremak- ers is our heart and soul with over 100 food tech- nologists, scientists and technicians. They work with an industry orientation on the improved products and economic solutions of tomorrow. Flour and baking with enzyme-based ingredients play an important role. Right now the focus is on a) Enzyme systems for improvement of the shelf life (rollability) of flatbread - following the trend of in- creasing demand for flatbread sales via supermarkets, b) Alphamalt Gloxy TGO, a new oxidizing enzyme system for dough stabilization, as replacement of chemical agents such as ADA and c) Enzyme treatment of composite flours for im- proved yield. A MONUMENTAL PLACE FOR MILLERS You’re also the founder of the FlourWorld Museum. I know you attach great importance to this museum. How important is this museum to you? The FlourWorld Museum is the result of finding a flour sack by chance on the beach in Dubai. Today it holds over 3500 flour sacks from 140 countries. The exhibits focus on the de- signs on the sacks, which tell exciting stories about the tradi- tions, myths and benefits of flour. We created the museum as homage to the millers who make our daily flour. The curators make it an educational place, and the millers who visit it can’t believe what a monument we have built to honour them. 20 March was registered by the National Day Calen- dar as World Flour Day. I think this is important to ap- preciate the vital role of millers. Your share is big in that development. What would you like to say about this? We established the day in order to remind the billions of consumers of flour - in the form of bread, cookies, pizza, and pasta - of this “Gift of Life”. It would be a success for me if every second mill in the world took this day as an occasion to come up with a special bakery item with their customers, and use it to celebrate with their end consumers. The decision to progress from a trader to a producer was one of the milestones in the developments of the company.