By Surihe Gaomas
RUNDU
A multi-million-dollar milling plant which is up and running in Rundu to cater for the five maize and wheat producing projects in the Kavango Region, can enhance the Government’s green scheme project.
Current government irrigation projects such as Vungu-Vungu, Etunda, Mashare, Musese and Shadikongoro symbolise the five stars of the Pentagon, hence the name Pentagon Milling.
Production started about a year ago. The private milling plant produces on average 1 000 tonnes of maize meal and 350 tonnes of wheat meal per month.
Products range from sifted and unsifted maize meal as well as the ‘cream’ of maize which is a very fine milled product used for baby feeding, and the commonly known drink of “mageu”. Wheat products vary from the normal white bread flour, brown bread flour to cake flour.
Two weeks ago President Hifikepunye Pohamba on his regional tour of the Caprivi and Kavango regions visited the milling plant to familiarize himself with its operations.
During the visit, the Head of State was impressed with the manner in which the milling company was marketing its products in the Kavango.
Chief Executive Officer of Pentagon Milling, Schalk Oosthuizen, who showed Pohamba around the facility said truckloads of maize and wheat products come to the plant every day. They get processed locally for sale and distribution to various retail shops in the region.
“Trucks come in and download the goods and we start milling it 24 hours a day. There is a huge demand for maize meal and flour in this region and especially in the north. Nothing gets wasted as the leftovers are also fed to the pigs or used as fertiliser in nearby agricultural farms,” explained Oosthuizen.
Through a lease agreement, Pentagon Milling receives maize and wheat supply from the five government projects in the region. This in turn gives agriculturalists working on these plantations a market for their goods, instead of having to worry about transport costs to other far off places.
While Shadikongoro and Musese provide 60 percent of maize and wheat supply, the rest of the other agricultural projects’ supply depends on their harvests.
Giving a more in-depth analysis of operations at the milling plant, Milling Manager Giel Schoombee, said the company has committed itself to the region’s development by giving government irrigation projects and individual farmers the opportunity to sell their products easily.
“We are willing to buy the maize and wheat products from small farmers as long as the products are of good quality. In the past, there were lots of problems with the farmers not having the motivation to transport their produce outside the region due to high transport costs,” said Schoombee.
Situated behind the Pentagon Milling production plant are four silos that will be used by Government to store grain for drought relief purposes. The tanks have a storage capacity of 1 400 tonnes each.
Schoombee added that the company is willing to negotiate with Government on how best they can together boost the green scheme projects. “We are willing to work with Government and give some advice to them as we have been long in the trade and would like to contribute to the green scheme,” said Schoombee.
Currently, 40 employees work at the plant, mostly men as the jobs are highly labour intensive. Production is in two 12-hour shifts on a 24-hour basis. For safety and hygienic reasons, each worker is provided with gloves and protective clothing.
“The maize arrives in truckloads mainly in bulk, gets weighed on the weighbridge, transported on a conveyor belt into a storage bin. The maize is then sucked by a special machine to the different storage tanks. From there, the milling process starts,” explained Schoombee.
The maize goes through a pre-cleaning process which is mainly a “washing and blowing process”, after which it gets transported to the conditioning bin where more moisture is added.
“The maize must have some moisture in it before it can be milled. Then it goes through the de-germination process where the germ/seed inside the maize pits gets removed and then sucked through a huge fan called the pneumatic system,” he added.
Then it eventually gets taken through to the roller stands where the actual milling takes place, emerges out through the plant sifter and gets sorted out for packaging and distributed to various selling retail shops in the region
The company plans to expand its output to cater for the huge maize and wheat market especially in the northern part of the country.