Miller Magazine Issue: 139 July 2021

71 TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM MILLER / july 2021 conduct ongoing research & share technical protocols with customers. I have over 30 research articles & tech- nical papers presented at international conferences & published in scientific periodicals. In 2011, when I was group vice president, I decided to relocate to Australia and worked there as a techni- cal advisor for GrainCorp, a multinational giant in grain handling, storage & flour milling, that allowed me to visit many flour mills in different countries as I was responsi- ble for technical customer support, grist management, harvest surveillance and staff/customer training. I also served as a council member of the prestigious Wheat Classification Council of Australia for three years. In 2016, I was invited again to return to UAE as chief technical officer with the newly established Essa Al Ghu- rair Investment Group and since then I have been in- volved in new grain related industries including a flour milling joint venture in Saudi Arabia recently. How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected the grain/ flour milling sectors? How will this pandemic change the future of our industry? As bread is a staple part of the diet in this re- gion, I didn’t notice any effect on the flour milling industry during the current pandemic. How will digital technologies affect the food industry? Very much. I still remember that it was all manual work 3 decades ago and now one can control the whole oper- ation from the cell phone. Can you please give us information about Essa Al Ghurair Investment and its fields of activity? In 2014, Mr. Essa Al Ghurair formed a new group where we initially focused on a coffee roasting plant, a gluten-free pasta plant and a gluten-free flour produc- tion line, and now more recently we have invested as a partner in the Saudi Arabian flour & feed milling industry (around 5,000MT/day of flour & feed) after the privatiza- tion of Saudi mills. What kind of role and place does Essa Al Ghurair Investment in the milling and food industry in the Middle East? As I mentioned earlier, Essa Al Ghurair Investment was established in 2014 but we have profound experience in: • Flour Milling: Pioneers in Flour Milling in this region • Commissioning & Operations: Commissioned sev- eral flour mills in UAE, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Algeria Dr. Irfan Hashmi is working as Chief Technical Officer with Essa Al-Ghurair Investment. Founded by Mr. Essa Al Ghurair, the company is one of the leading food corporations.