Mühlenchemie opens research facility in Russia

Mühlenchemie offers Russian millers a wide range of support, such as on the spot analysis and transfer of knowledge, at its applications laboratory in St. Petersburg.

There is a long tradition of agriculture in Russia.

Many factors affect the cultivation of grain crops, such as numerous genetic variations for wheat and a wide variation between climates and soils, thereby producing various batches of wheat.

The diversity of the raw material has an enormous influence on the quality of the flour.

Modern mills also have to react to customers' new and increasingly varied eating habits.

"In Russia, people expect flours to have a reliably uniform quality and yet the costs of production and the final retail price have to stay affordable," says Lennart Kutschinski, managing director of Mühlenchemie.

"Flour standardization and improvement are therefore increasingly important aspects from the competitive point of view."

"We wish to be as close to where our customers work as possible. And that means not just having qualified employees nearby, but also the appropriate equipment at hand. That is the reason we are setting up a new applications laboratory with a dough rheology department and trial bakery in St. Petersburg," says Kutschinski.

The laboratory will form the core of Mühlenchemie's activities in Russia.

It will be one of the most modern research facilities for bakery issues in the country, which is equipped with analysis equipment, measuring devices, farinograph, extensograph and alveograph.

Companies either either send their samples to the laboratory, or use the equipment in the facility to test the flour personally.

In this way the specific conditions that influence a particular mill's products can be simulated in order to test the methods needed to achieve the right kind of flour.

There will also be four technologists well versed in bakery and flour technology at the facility to offer assistance and advice to millers.