Agro processing: the stage between the field and the factory
Cleaning, drying, de-husking and milling. Sized wrong, it starves the line downstream.
Agro processing is the least glamorous division in this catalogue and the one that most often determines whether the rest of an investment works. It is the primary processing stage - cleaning, drying, de-husking, milling - that stands between a crop as harvested and a material a packing line can use.
Why it gets sized wrong
Buyers establishing processing capacity usually specify the visible end first: the line that produces the packaged product. The primary stage is then sized to whatever budget is left, and the result is a plant whose output is capped by its least visible section. Primary processing should be sized against the same daily intake as everything downstream, and ideally with headroom, because it is the stage most affected by variation in the incoming crop.
The crop is the specification
As with post-harvest handling, the crop decides the machine more than the tonnage does. Moisture at intake, foreign matter, husk ratio and how the crop arrives - bagged, loose, from one source or many - all change what the primary stage has to do. An enquiry naming the crop and the daily volume gets a real answer; one naming only a tonnage gets a question back.
Quote it with what comes after
This division and the food processing plant division are routinely quoted together for exactly the reason above: the sizing of one decides the sizing of the other. Where the finished product is bottled or packed, the filling and packing division joins the same conversation, and the three are specified as one capacity rather than three purchases.
Where the crop has to be held before processing, cold storage belongs in the same calculation.
Choosing a supplier
- Ask what crop their reference installations run, and what they changed for it.
- Ask what the machine does with off-specification material, because it will arrive.
- Ask for the wear parts list and their expected life at your throughput.
- Ask whether the stage can be extended later without replacing what you buy now.
Tell us the crop, the daily volume and the product you intend to sell. Request a quotation, or see the agro processing range.