Bühler Technology Success Story
Thirty years ago, a Swiss multinational company arrived in the Colombian countryside offering integral solutions for food processing, and giving the agricultural sector of the Orinoquía region access to the entire value chain.
Casanare is Piedmont Plains territory par excellence, it is characterized by its vast extensive landscape. Locals and foreigners alike are astonished by the most beautiful sunrises. Its contrasting biodiverse landscapes including plains, rivers and mountains, make it the perfect destination for adventure tourism. Casanare is also fertile land, ideal for agro-industrial production with livestock and agriculture, driving a large part of its economy.
In an effort to contribute to the growth and developmet of one of the most important industries in the country, Bühler designed and built in Yopal Casanare, the first fully automated rice processing plant in Latin America. Molinos El Yopal - Arroz Casanare is one of the first automated plants and has been an example for the technological, economic, and social transfomation among different food industries, including flour, beer, pasta and large scale rice processing.
The core objective of the synergy was to develop and install an industrial rice processing plant with state-of-the-art quality norms and standards, processing dry paddy rice as the main product with yields of around 80% white mass and obtaining white rice in its raw product version for human consumption.
This plant has state-of-the-art technology in its mechanical and electrical equipment, controlled with the latest version of the Mercury® system, an automation system designed by Bühler, for process control and online production monitoring. Mercury® is a webserver development and one of its benefits is remote access from anywhere in the world for its clients.
The facilities are modern and specifically designed to their needs. The Molinos El Yopal plant is driven by the best industry practices, focused on providing high quality products for maximum client satisfaction, including the following specifically developed technical aspects:
This first automated rice plant stands for Bühler quality designed to the highest European international manufacturing standards, reflecting Bühler's more than 160 years of experience in the market, manufacturing industrial machinery around the world for food companies.
Innovation for a better region: watch the video about Bühler´s solutions for Molinos El Yopal.
Implementing this technology at the Molinos El Yopal plant marked a milestone in the agroindustrial production of the region, involving a selection and evaluation process of various proposals; Bühler had credibility and world recognition on their side, and this was sufficient reason to take the big step towards the production of quality rice with certainty.
"When the company decided to invest in a new plant, we started to review all the options available in the milling industry and after an arduous investigation, we landed on the Bühler proposal, because it offered us not only the mechanical component, but also the automation component," said Teidy Rodríguez, head of production at Molinos El Yopal.
An integral part of our decision to work with Bühler, a renowned Swiss company, was the automation component it established for rice plants. That is how we decided that they would be the ones to provide us with total support, from design to start-up
Rosa Margarita Serrano,
Managing Director at Molinos El Yopal
Thirty years ago, Molinos El Yopal decided to create the first rice plant, becoming the pioneer in the production of rice in Yopal - Casanare, with the brand name Arroz Casanare. During the early 90s, the first mill started marketing the product in bulk, selling and distributing it in Corabastos. It then ventured into the packaged rice sector, supplying supermarkets in Boyacá, Casanare and Bogotá. Today, Bühler's technology has empowered the rice industry in the region, growing the brand domestically through automation of its processes.
"At Molinos Yopal, we are proud of having taken the leap from something mechanical to automated, ensuring that when a product reaches the consumer's hand, it's been given a seal of quality, and that has been crucial," emphasized the General Manager of Molinos El Yopal.
Its new processes paved the way for optimization, expansion and better team integration among those who run what today is a large mill. According to Bühler's Sales Manager, Enrique Niño "producers can monitor their mill and operations from home or any remote point".
When a region such as Casanare,with the largest number of rice mills, somehow becomes the supplier of the staple food of Colombian households, the growth of this industry in the region speaks for itself, as expressed by Juan Bernardo Serrano, farmer in the region of Casanare: "Colombia is an unprofitable country in rice production, Casanare is home to a growing agro-industry, and it is becoming a domestic and Latin American leader in this sector".
Moreover, the experience and reputation of the Swiss multinational company is no a product of good luck. and they have become the best partner for regional economic development, because "Bühler has 160 years of experience and has always been at the forefront of production process technology that is now being implemented in Casanare rice", said Luis Felipe Machado, Sales Manager of Bühler Automation.
The company provided Casanare with the first automated rice processing plant, in Latin America, a source of pride for the region and the nation, thereby improving the quality of its flagship product, with a significant increase in production leading to more and new markets, which is clearly a success story.
"I talk about this success story with great pride, primarily because we are the first to make this leap in the rice sector. It means a lot for the region and the country, that despite the circumstances, there are companies that believe in development and innovation, and are focused on technology," said Rosa Margarita Serrano.
Bühler is aware of its relationship with the communities and has exclusively designed a plant that as well as fullfilling Molinos El Yopal's needs, provides easy access to public, so that students from schools and universities, as well as residents of the region and the country, can visit. It coplies with all the biosafety protocols ensuring both, the protection of its visitors and the quality and safety of the product, Arroz Casanare.
The success of Molinos El Yopal goes hand in hand with leveraging the development of communities in the area, marking a milestone in competitive aspects of the rice sector, although taking into account its livestock farming capabilities.
"The opening of such a mill in the area generates a concentration of production that favors a great variety of alternatives. We come from a livestock and food crop production area. the fact that there is a mill that buys the crops, motivates the region to turn rice-farming into an alternative life project for hundreds of families, they need a mill nearby to advise them and buy their crops at a good price," said Juan Bernardo Serrano.
In former times, technology was believed to be a distant concept. Today it regains its reputation as the best ally in the sustainability of civilizations and, that for the specific case of rice production in Casanare, it demonstrates with facts and figures that there is increased production that meets national demand. It generates jobs and growth in the agricultural sector and provides the economy with a region like the Llanera, a wonderful corner of Colombia with colorful landscapes, wonderful music full of joropo, harps and espadrilles, with a promising and hopeful future.
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