Successful oilseed processing
A solution provider that can supply everything from technology, engineering and process equipment to project management helps an oil-crushing company to stay ahead of its competition, as Italian market leaders Cereal Docks found when they engaged the services of Bühler
89/03/2020
“We partner with farmers, working together to cultivate the values of quality, safety, sustainability and transparency,” says Cereal Docks, the largest soybean processor in Italy. The company produces raw oils and protein meals from soybeans, rapeseed and sunflowers for the animal feed and food industries, and prides itself on creating a seamless link between agriculture and agro industry. This allows it to guarantee the highest quality products without compromising environmental considerations.
Originally launched in the early 1980s, the company has grown substantially over the last 35 years, becoming a leading force in the oil seed processing sector after opening its first extraction plant in the year 2000. Cereal Docks processes soybeans for a wide range of international commercial partners and has built a state-of-the-art, 3,000 tons-per-day soybean hot dehulling facility.
Crucial for Cereal Docks in this project was the ability to build a plant that had the high-process flexibility to produce sufficient high-protein soy meal for the ever-growing regional and international feed industry market. For the expertise to allow it to create premium products it looked to global food technology solution provider Bühler to design, commission, engineer and supply the preparation plant.
Bühler’s capacity, and the sheer range of its expertise, meant that Cereal Docks was able to use the Swiss company as a single solution for the entire preparation section of the plant. Bühler was not only able to provide process and plant engineering alongside its own machine manufacturing and installation services, it also delivered a comprehensive consulting and project management package, as well as highly localized customer service.
On the ground this meant provision of a high-throughput weighing system with pinpoint accuracy to control plant capacity, along with state-of-the-art cleaning technology to ensure the removal of impurities and guarantee the highest possible quality of oil and extraction meal.
When we first entered this market, we saw Bühler as an essential partner because of its competence, technological capability, and most importantly because of the high technology content of its machines.
Mauro Fanin,
CEO Cereal Docks
Bühler supplied Cereal Docks with a flexible OLHA fluid bed dryer able to treat high-moisture beans with 140°C hot air for a short, intensive period to improve efficiency of the dehulling process. The impact of the hot air makes the hulls crack which loosens the beans from the kernels, and the hot beans are then fed into an OLCB cracking mill where fluted rolls crush the soft kernels to the correct granulation and break off the hulls.
The combination of OLCB cracking mills and OLSA cascade aspirators – which separate the hulls and kernels – help to provide optimum efficiency, and six high-capacity OLFB flakers then process the dehulled soy cracks in the most energy-efficient way possible, creating consistent flakes anywhere between 0.3 and 0.4mm, according to the customer’s needs.
After the separated hulls have been ground by hammer mills, they are sterilized with steam and heat to ensure they comply with the most stringent feed safety standards. The sterilized hulls are then either pelleted or dosed and mixed with soy extraction meal to meet the required protein levels.
Bühler’s unmatched engineering and project management capabilities, coupled with its vast process knowledge and unique product portfolio, make it the obvious partner choice for Cereal Docks to achieve its ambitions in the sector. It is this unique ability to go beyond simple equipment sales to create an entire process chain – coupled with fast, efficient, and localized service – that ensures not only the success of the plant but a successful lifelong partnership for the two organisations.
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