La Moderna
Grupo La Moderna is more than a food processing and production company. Over the last 100 years, the family-owned and -run enterprise has become synonymous with safe, nutritious, and affordable staple foods such as pasta, cookies, and snacks across Mexico, the United States, and Central America. Thanks to continuous upgrades of their existing equipment and recent investments in the latest cleaning and milling technology, La Moderna is perfectly positioned to cater to an ever-growing market with increasingly stringent quality requirements.
Lukas Hofstetter, December 2023
La Moderna is a household name in Mexico in every sense of the word. From its famous tomato noodle soups that every child knows and loves, to its wide variety of cookies, to the thousands of tonnes of flour it provides for end consumers and industrial bakeries – it’s hard not to come into contact with La Moderna’s products in everyday life.
Over 5,000 employees produce and distribute their products to Central and North America in a total of seven mills, seven pasta plants, two packaging facilities, and one cookie plant. With this size and relevance comes a strong sense of responsibility for providing food for millions of people – 365 days a year. José Antonio Monroy Carrillo is CEO of the Milling Division, Member of the Board, and co-owner of La Moderna. He practically grew up with the company. “My father Don Eduardo Monroy Cárdenas acquired La Fabrica de Pastas Alimenticias La Moderna together with two business partners in 1959 and shortly after took full control of the company at just age 33. Throughout his life, he always lived up to his values to ‘live to serve’ and built what is today known as Grupo La Moderna thanks to his keen sense for business and his unwavering commitment to excellence and quality,” he recalls.
Monroy is an engineer (Ingeniero, Ing.) and is building on his fatherʼs legacy, carefully balancing the need for producing more quantity every year while adhering to stricter quality requirements. “Our operations are spread across Mexico, combined with a pasta plant in Guatemala and one in Texas in the United States. This network of production sites enables us to source our grains both internationally and locally, and to react quickly to shifts in requirements or production capacities in different regions. After all, our mills, bakeries, and pasta plants need to keep running all the time to provide food for people in 16 countries in Latin and Central America and in the US,” explains Ing. Monroy.
One of the largest subsidiaries of La Moderna is called Harinera Los Pirineos. Located in the heart of Mexico in the state of Guanajuato, Los Pirineos operates a mill in Irapuato with a daily capacity of 270 tonnes of wheat, while the mill in Salamanca processes 530 tonnes of wheat per day. Leopoldo Giménez has been Production Manager at Harinera los Pirineos in Irapuato for the last seven years. He knows very well what it takes to keep production running while never compromising on food safety.
“In addition to the two mills in Salamanca and Irapuato, we also operate a grain silo in Villagrán, Guanajuato with a capacity of 111,000 tonnes, which we will increase to 134,000 in 2024. That’s where we take in local wheat as well as varieties from the US and Canada,” Giménez explains. “The fourth site is in Abasolo, where we buy local Bajio wheat directly from farmers and rely on a storage capacity of 45,000 tonnes. In total, we buy around 25 percent of all the wheat grown in the region,” he says. This mixture of locally sourced wheat and bulk intake and storage of North American wheat provides Los Pirineos with an important diversification in times of more uncertain supply chains.
Back at the mill in Irapuato, Leopoldo Giménez walks through the recently upgraded mill – also known as La Montaña – together with Eikner Guecha, Area Sales Manager Milling Solutions at Bühler Mexico. “We’re one of the smaller operations of the company, but we play a key role in supplying the raw material for the cookie factory, which is in Toluca. We also produce flour for La Moderna’s snack food production plant. La Moderna is such a large company with an incredibly tight production network spread across Mexico. Every location must fulfill its purpose to keep production running – that’s why we need to be able to rely on our equipment and on Bühler’s service team in case action is needed,” says Giménez.
Throughout the past few decades, La Moderna with Bühler has consistently upgraded its milling equipment to stay up to date with the latest technological developments and to cater to the increasing demands of the industry. The last upgrade, however, was quite a challenge.
Our mills, bakeries, and pasta plants need to keep running all the time to provide food for people in 16 countries in Latin and Central America and in the US.
José Antonio Monroy Carrillo, CEO of the Milling Division, Member of the Board, and co-owner of La Moderna
“We set ourselves a strict time frame for the capacity increase here at La Montaña. The project included bringing in new equipment such as our Dolomit eight-roller mill, our Sirius plansifter, as well as the engineering and installation of the pneumatic and aspiration system for the new mill. This allowed us to increase capacity from 150 tonnes per day to 250 tonnes per day,” says Eikner Guecha.
In only two weeks, the team finished the upgrade with minimal impact on daily operations thanks to meticulous planning and years of experience in working together. “It all comes down to two pillars: the technological side enables us to provide La Moderna with the latest innovations in milling. The engineering side, on the other hand, allows us to create specific solutions tailored to their needs,” Guecha explains.
One man who has experienced La Moderna’s rise to one of the major food producers in the region firsthand is José Antonio Novelo Pérez. He’s been with the company for 37 years and is now General Manager at Harinas Los Pirineos.
“Our plant here in Irapuato has a strong strategic relevance for La Moderna. First, we’re located in the Bajío region, the major wheat cultivation area in Mexico. Second, we produce regular wheat flour for our production sites as compared to all our other mills, which produce semolina for pasta. Which brings us to the third pillar – our specialty flours, in particular premix flours for use everyday in households as well as industrial use such as in bakeries,” he explains.
While his teams rely only on Bühler equipment in their milling operations, it’s the technology for premix flour production that Novelo Pérez is particularly fond of. “The premix production is the backbone of Los Pirineos. We’re talking about accuracy down to the millimeter, requiring an incredible level of precision. We need to be able to count on equipment that gives us the peace of mind that there are no deviations in product quality, as this flour, in part, goes directly to end consumers. That’s a high level of responsibility, and we can provide our premix flour to millions of Mexicans in good conscience,” he says.
At the corporate level, Sergio Orozco is responsible for all production across the company’s seven mills. Overseeing all these activities across multiple regions, Orozco knows the key to keeping this fine-tuned machine running all year round and to staying ahead of the game.
“Bühler has been supplying us with the most reliable milling equipment for years. What I appreciate even more is that their team goes beyond selling equipment as they always strive to improve our processes and our efficiency.
For example, it would be impossible to meet the increasingly stringent food safety requirements in our field without the Sortex optical sorting technology – there simply is nothing on the market that matches its accuracy, and we are using the machine in all our facilities across Mexico.”
It would be impossible to meet the increasingly stringent food safety requirements in our field without the Sortex optical sorting technology.
Sergio Orozco, Head of Milling Production at La Moderna
At the company’s headquarters in Toluca, one hour from the country’s capital Mexico City, Ing. José Antonio Monroy Carrillo studies the latest production reports from La Moderna’s seven mills spread across the country. With the population of Mexico expected to reach 148 million by 2050 – an increase of 20 million from 2023 – his company’s role in ensuring food security will only increase. Ing. Monroy and his teams are ready for the challenge.
“The key factors are reliable processes, striving for the highest quality with every grain processed, and always looking ahead for the next innovation. It’s comforting to know that with Bühler’s best-in-class equipment and knowledge, we can trust in our operations. What’s even more important to us is that together with the Bühler team here in Mexico, we continuously challenge each other to find new ways to improve efficiency and yield. This benefits all of us, but especially the millions of people in Central and North America relying on us to provide safe, nutritious, and affordable foods,” he says. Staying true to its company values, Grupo La Moderna is fully focused on its next milestone project: A new pasta semolina mill, which will boast a capacity of 120 tonnes per day. The project – equipped with Bühler technology and digital solutions across the value chain from cleaning to the packaging system – will be the new milling line of La Moderna’s Tamisa operations in Navojoa, the capital of one of the main durum wheat farming states in Mexico.
An engineer by trade with a profound understanding of industrial food processing, Ing. Monroy looks forward to reaping the benefits of the latest innovations in milling and pasta production. “This new line will enable us to increase our high-quality standards and boost our efficiency, traceability, and food safety, to name a few benefits. We are excited to continue our success story and providing good and affordable foods to our millions of consumers that trust in the La Moderna brand every day,” he says.
With their impressive production and distribution network across Central and North America, it’s certain that Grupo La Moderna will remain a household name for generations to come.
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