THE NEW OSHO GRAIN MILLERS MILL IS RUNNING

Share this article

Osho Grain Millers commissioned Ocrim to build a new maize mill to increase the production of maize (corn) flour. The company is in Kenya, a country where maize represents the basic diet of the population with a yearly consumption of around 4 million tons. With maize (corn) flour is produced ugali, a popular staple food in Kenya, very similar to our polenta, but white in colour, which is traditionally eaten with the hands.

Sergio Manfredini (Ocrim miller),in the middle, together with Osho Grain Millers’ operators

Our team worked for two months at the Osho Grain Millers headquarters in Ruiru, 30 km from Nairobi, to start up and commissioning the new maize mill plant with dry degermination and gravity tables having a capacity of 200 tons/24 hours. Ocrim supplied the mill’s cleaning section that includes a control scale, grain separator, classifying aspirator and destoner.The degermination and classifying section includes dry impact degerminators and gravity tables, whereas, for the refining section, roller mills and plansifters to classify and grade the finished products.

Corn first enters the cleaning section (capacity of 10 tph), where coarse, fine, light impurities and stones are removed. After a brief tempering, the corn is processed through impact degerminators type DGF that gently break the maize kernels, separating the germ from the vitreous part. After the degerminators, the product is then classified by size through the sifter in different size of grits and germ. Through the gravity tables, the germ is then separated by density from the grits. In the milling section, the degermed grits are reduced to the required granulation for their specific use.

The plant is fully automated with a dedicated control system to monitor, in real time, the status of each section, from storage to packing. Alarm systems are in place on each piece of equipment. All the systems are managed through a PLC centralized computer. With this new plant, which has a grain storage capacity of 4,000 tons, Osho Grain Millers can satisfy most of the requests coming from the local market. In addition to maize (corn) flour, the plant was also designed to produce corn grits, that can be used by breweries and for the production of snacks. By-products such as corn germ can be integrated into the animal meal or used as a standalone product for the extraction of edible oil.