Today's blog was written by grower Chris Syme from Cunderdin.
The drive out entailed travelling on typical city streets with locals on motor bikes, push bikes, small trucks and taxis.
After travelling 40 minutes we entered a new motor freeway. Not a lot of local traffic as the toll fee may be to expense for the locals. We found it slightly strange that on the expressway the speed limit was only 40km.
We passed farmland with water buffalo grazing, rice harvesting and construction sites.
We arrived at 11.00 am to a very impressive modern flour mill. Outside on the flag pole were 4 flags, which represented the financial interests, Australian (CBH), Japan, Indonesia and Vietnam the country located.
We meet with Houm, who has worked with Interflour for 7 years.
The flour mill site is 32has including the wharf. There is room for the malting plant to be built in the next year and we are taken over to view the site and see the plans.
We were treated to lunch at the staff canteen, and served bread made in the test laboratory which was still warm and fluffy.
We had a tour of the facility - very warm day to be inside the mill, we thought around 37-40c with around 90% humidity, so it was quite a sweaty walk.
The wharf has a unloading turnaround of 3-4 days with a grain or feed ship in every week. The grain can be unloaded at 1,200 tonne an hour using a screw auger. The wharf also out loads feed into 500 tonne barges to delivery to smaller ports which can't handle the Panamax 75,000 tonne loads.
Unloading from incoming ships in the wharf is 1,200 tonne per hour. With 20,000 tonne in storage currently. The mill runs 7 days a week, 24 hours a day and out loads 600-800 tonne of flour a day.
Interflour has a staff of 430 with 250 working at the Vietnam site. Average wages in Vietnam are US$102 a month but staff at Interflour are paid three times above the average and are provided many benefits.
To mill flour, wheat needs to be softened and moisture levels need to be at 14%, so water is added.
To mill flour, wheat needs to be softened and moisture levels need to be at 14%, so water is added.
The milling process is to blend different grades of wheat, clean, grind, and separate until flour meets milling specs. Normally you get 750kgs flour from 1 tonne of wheat. The bran is sold to feed and other markets.
We were all very surprised to see the amount of sand and stones removed from wheat in the cleaning process.
High end flours are in 25kg paper bags, most other in 25 kg poly bags and bulk tankers of 23 tonne for bigger customers.
We travelled back to Ho Chi Minh City in the afternoon, some had a swim to wash away the warm humid day and then we all went out to dinner to celebrate our last full night together on the grower trip.
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