Henry Simon Milling, a global provider of smart milling products and service, has built a new flour mill for Grands Moulins du Benin (GMB) in Benin
The new production line has a daily production capacity of 200 tonnes, processing imported hard, semi-hard, and soft wheat to produce bakery flour for distribution within Benin and neighbouring countries.
The milling equipment, including roller mills (HSRM), quadro plansifters (HSQP 830G) with large sieve boxes, and purifiers (HSPU), are equipped with Advanced Sensor Technology. This technology allows real-time monitoring of operating conditions of machines to ensure high operational safety in the milling process.
The advanced automation system of the plant provides integrated and easy process management ability, with the centralised monitoring of the entire process from the wheat intake to flour packaging, a representative from Henry Simon said.
The Scada’s detailed reports on production data, extraction, maintenance plan, and error log, etc., is another advanced feature of the automation system.
Also, the remote connection feature enables the Henry Simon after-sales team to access the mill remotely whenever required, for technical assistance.
New US$22mn cashew processing unit to be built
Meanwhile, Nand Kishore & Sons (NKS), Indian investor active in timber trade in Benin, has inked an agreement with the Beninese authorities, the Investment and Industry Promotion Company (SIPI-Benin), to construct a cashew nut processing plant worth US$22mn.
The new facility set to be located at the Glo-Djigbè Industrial Zone of (GDIZ) will have a processing capacity of 30,000 tonnes of cashews per year. The construction set to commence by December, is expected to be completed by August 2022, creating 600 direct and thousands indirect job opportunities. Africa produces about 45% or 1.2 million tonnes of global cashew nuts annually with Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Mozambique being the leading producing countries.
Cashew nut is the country’s second-largest agricultural export product after cotton, and accounts for 3% of the gross national product (GNP) and 25% of the income from agricultural exports.
