BENIN – Henry Simon Milling, a leading global provider of intelligent milling products and service has built and delivered a new flour mill for Grands Moulins du Benin (GMB) in Benin.

All of the new mill’s equipment was supplied and built by Henry Simon Milling on a turnkey basis including the process design, manufacturing, project management, and installation services.

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 state-of-the-art 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 reliability, efficiency, and operational safety in the milling process.

The advanced automation system of the plant provides an integrated and easy process management ability, with the centralized monitoring of the entire process from the wheat intake to flour packaging, 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 from long distances whenever required for technical assistance including inspection, error diagnosis, calibration, and troubleshooting.

New US$22m cashew processing unit to be built

Meanwhile, Nand Kishore & Sons (NKS), Indian investor active in timber trade in Benin is seeking to diversify its operations into cashew nut processing.

NKS has inked an agreement with the Beninese authorities, the Investment and Industry Promotion Company (SIPI-Benin), to construct a cashew nut processing plant worth CFA franc 13 billion (US$22m).

The new facility set to be located at the Glo-Djigbè Industrial Zone of (GDIZ) will have a processing capacity of 30,000 tons of cashews per year.

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.

In Benin the sector stands out as one of the highest value-added flagship industries given its high potential to contribute to employment and income generation; contribution to food and nutritional security; and great export potential.

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.

Undertaking local processing will boost the value chain which has been highly focused on exporting of raw cashews to international markets such as India, fetching low value.

This new project comes a few weeks after Atlantic Moulin Bénin (AMB), part of the Atlantic Group announced an investment of CFA francs 14 billion (US$24m) for the establishment of a production unit with an estimated annual capacity of 90,000 tonnes of wheat flour in the GDIZ.

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