Cleaning wheat

The Kampffmeyer Gruppe is Germany's largest milling company which produces high-quality milled grain products for food companies worldwide. After years of relying on a variety of mechanical sorters, such as the indent cylinder and gravity separator, the company has installed two Buhler Sortex Z sorters. The optical sorters have reduced the mill's flow diagram, increased yields and reduced energy costs.

Mr Ax, Kampffmeyer's head miller, is fulsome in his praise for the Sortex sorters. I have never seen a machine that can sort so many defects simultaneously, he says of the sorters, which have replaced mechanical cleaning machines on two wheat production lines.

The Sortex machines rely on colour recognition so they can remove more contaminate and reject less good grain a common complaint about mechanical sorters is that they reject good grain simply because it is undersized though otherwise acceptable.

Sortex sorters also require less energy, feature remote diagnostics and are easily operated and reprogrammed for different products.

Kampffmeyer uses Sortex sorters in a number of mills, not only for soft wheat, but also for rye production because the optical sorters feature low running costs, increased yields (typically output can be as pure as 99.9%) and ease of use.