Yesterday, Mr. Hemanth Nagaraja, Head of Corporate Technology at Bühler South Asia came to our hotel in Bangalore in order to give the delegation an introduction into Bühler and the Grain Value Chain. The Swiss headquartered company is focusing on plants and milling solutions. Bühler machineries are mainly found within grain and food processing for wheat, cacao and rice. Furthermore, the automotive and textiles production is being supported as well by Bühler components. With sites in more than 130 countries, Bühler shows global competence and tries to produce their machines where they are needed.
Bühler India has around 500 employees and was established in 1993 as a Joint Venture. Since 2000, the company is 100% owned by Bühler. The know-how exchange between India and Switzerland is very important and takes place regularly by sending people from Switzerland to India for approximately 2 years each.
Mr. Nagaraja was explaining about the rice milling industry in India and its challenges. Besides the loss of around 30% within production, especially, economies of scale are difficult to be achieved. The farmers and millers are spread around the country and therefore, the state regulations and the poor infrastructure in some areas does not support economies of scale. Furthermore, the consumption and consumer preferences are depending tremendously from the region too.
Bühler India has a decentralized organization and offers local service hubs. In order to meet client’s expectation, Bühler is also analysing the local needs by local Research & Development offices.
Today, the Focus India delegation had the chance to visit a rice mill near Bangalore together with Mr. Nagaraja. The plant including its Bühler machinery for cleaning, drying, sorting and parboiling of the rice, is run by private owners. The producers are focusing on high quality and generate an output of 4 tons per hour. The loss in rice milling is mainly due to storage and transportation issues within the plant as this is all being done manually. Bühler is optimizing their machines further and tries to develop the functions as well as the processes from the plants during the next years in order to reduce the loss.
(Article by Patricia Lexow and Darko Bosnjak)
More information: SLN Rice Mill and Bühler