The Rise of China's Flour Milling Machinery: A Development Overview

Flour milling machinery is kind of agricultural product processing machinery used to make wheat into flour. It can be divided into complete set flour milling plant and single flour milling machine.

The complete sets of flour milling equipment is mainly used for medium and large scale flour processing factory whose production capacity ranges from dozens to hundreds of tons of wheat flour per day; while single flour milling machine is mainly used in the vast rural areas of grain processing sites that produce dozens to hundreds of kilograms wheat flour (maize flour) per hour.

In China, flour milling machinery is applied to all kinds of flour processing enterprises and rural grain processing site. Each year these flour milling machines take on millions of tons of domestic and imported wheat processing task. And their growth process is the continuous improvement in the development of themselves.
 

Flour milling machinery stagger development

Speaking of flour mill machinery, there is a name known to everybody in the industry, that is "Buhler". Now even in China you can see its shadow in many large flour processing enterprises.

China is the world's largest wheat producer and consumer. With the improvement of people's living standards, the demand for all kinds of flour increased, which has greatly promoted the development of domestic flour processing machinery and technical level.

The flour processing machinery in China was developed from cone type milling machine in the sixties and seventies of the last century to modern high efficient, low energy consumption roller type flour milling machine and complete sets of equipment that can produce high quality flour. The number of production enterprises develops from originally a dozen or so to more than one hundred. There even emerged a number of enterprises that have more than 100 billion yuan of output value; some of these companies have passed through the ISO9000 certification. Their own-made flour milling machinery has gradually replaced imported equipment, and also exports to many countries in the Asia, Africa, and also many developed areas. Take ABC Machinery for example: it is now building a 160TPD wheat flour milling plant in New Zealand for its client.

At present, China has more than 100 flour processing machinery manufacturing enterprises, mainly in the main wheat producing areas of Shandong, Henan, Hebei, Shanxi, Shaanxi and other provinces. In addition to a small number of joint ventures, there are up to dozens of production enterprises with considerable production scale.

Great break through

The development of flour milling machinery industry in China today mainly benefits from the beginning of the eighties of the last century which is the golden age of domestic flour industry renewal and continued construction. At present, the flour milling machinery completely manufactured domestically is able to assemble modern flour production line, and has gone abroad and be used by people from different countries; it now even reaches international advanced level.

Because of the imbalanced economic development levels in China and the world, the demand for flour milling equipment also varies. Developed areas need large flour milling machinery with high scientific and technological content, or even world-class milling equipments from Buller, GBS or others; while in vast rural areas and towns in China's and the majority of developing countries and regions, small and middle flour mill devices or even single flour machines are welcomed.

At the same time, with consumers being influenced by the thought of return to nature, eat green food and full nutritional, they are much more in favor of full nutrition wheat flour roughly processed by single and small equipment. In addition to processing wheat, these small and medium-sized flour milling equipments are also able to process value-added grains such as oats, chili (hot pepper), soy flour, etc. This provides another living space for small and medium sized equipments.

According to the data provided by China Agricultural Machinery Industry Association, the agricultural machinery manufacturing technology of Southeast Asia is not as advanced as in European countries; many of the ASEAN countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, etc.) still rely on imports of agricultural machinery, so they still have large demand for flour processing machinery. And the flour processing machinery China made have the advantages of high quality performance and price ratio, which also strengthens the competitiveness of China's grain processing machinery over other countries when export to Southeast Asia.

The development of flour milling machinery in China for decades shows that, only by improving the ability of research and development, eliminating the further homogenization of products, and finding out multiple developments according to market demand can the manufacturers enhance their competitiveness. Only with the advantages of independent technology, self innovation and R&D capabilities, and then have independent intellectual property rights, can they remain invincible position in the market.

Standing in the height of industrial development, those flour milling machinery manufacturers that have certain ability shall not only speed up the industry integration to get rapid development and be stronger, but also actively enter similar industry development to enhance and expand the international competitiveness of China's flour milling machinery manufacturing industry.