Evolutionary changes in milling technology – Part 1
RAVI Menon NIn the year 1955, the Mongana Report was published after conducting a few years of comprehensive research on palm oil milling in Congo by a team of dedicated researchers from a number of plantation companies. They wanted to produce a reference material for the future generation of palm oil millers. lam sure no miller would ever say that he is ignorant of Mongana Report. Even today, the millers still make reference to it after a period of almost five decades. The researchers covered a wide spectrum of processing techniques and it looks like they did not leave much for future generation to probe on. We have come a long way since then but the basic concept of milling did not undergo much revolutionary changes. The changes that you see in present day mills are more evolutionary than revolutionary in nature as all of you would have observed in your mills. Today, we shall go through the minor changes in milling technology in Malaysia and elsewhere so that at least you become familiar with the terminology. Some of the changes presented here are conceptual and have not reached implementation stage yet but may be implemented to improve milling technology, in which case, they will be mentioned as such in this paper. We shall examine the incremental and revolutionary changes that took place in the last decade.
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