Rice Mill Industry in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka is an island country in South Asia. For a long time, rice has been the staple food of Sri Lankans. Rice processing is the country's largest agricultural industry, and its product value is higher than any other industry. It is estimated that more than 1 million hectares of land are used to grow rice. Nearly 1.8 million peasant families are engaged in rice cultivation in Sri Lanka, producing about 2.8 million tons of rice annually. There are about 70,000 rice processing plants in Sri Lanka.
The Role of a Rice Mill
A rice mill is a food processing facility where paddy is processed to rice to be sold in the market. The entire product is procured from paddy fields , milled and processed hygienically in modern machinery and dust free environment and cleaned through sorting machines .
According to statistics, in Sri Lanka, the consumption composition of rice is; about 60% of long-grain white rice, 30% of short-grain white rice and the remaining 10% of semi-ripe "red" rice and other local varieties,
Rice occupies a very important position in the lives of Sri Lankans. However, Sri Lanka's rice processing technology is still relatively backward. Only more than 42% (about 2940) of rice processing plants belong to semi-modern modern rice factories. The processing equipment of it's production is more backward
What is Rice Mill?
Rice milling process is all about producing edible milled rice after separating the husk (20%), the bran layers (11%) & clean rice 68-72% depending on the variety.
Function of Rice Mill
- Cleaning
- Hulling
- Milling
- Polishing
- Grading
- Sorting
- Pack/Storage
Commercial Rice Milling
The commercial rice milling is to reduce mechanical stresses and heat buildup in the grain, thereby minimizing grain breakage and producing uniformly polished grain. It is a more sophisticated system configured to maximize the process of producing well-milled, whole grains.
The rice milling facility comes in various configurations, and the milling components vary in design and performance. The commercial mill has three basic stages,
01. the husking stage,
02. the whitening-polishing stage, and
03. the grading, blending, and packaging stage.
In modern rice mills, many adjustments (e.g rubber roll clearance, separator bed inclination, feed rates) are automated for maximum efficiency and ease of operation. The whitener-polishers are provided with gauges that sense the current load on the motor drives which gives an indication of the operating pressure on the grain. This provides a more objective means of setting milling pressures on the grain.
Objectives of commercial milling
A commercial rice miller will have following objectives:
- produce edible rice that appeals to the customer - i.e. rice that is sufficiently milled and free of husks, stones, other non-grain materials
- maximize the total milled rice recovery out of paddy and minimize grain breakage.
Types of commercial Rice Mills
Good Article Malaka,
ReplyDeleteThere is an urgent need to conduct a technical study on electricity consumption of different type of millers with special reference to cost effectiveness, constraints and solutions to overcome those problems. Introduction and
creation of awareness for millers about generation of electricity from paddy husk are necessary. Research should also be strengthened in this area. The authorities
need to Take measures to ensure effective, efficient energy supply, best practices, and an appropriate tariff.
Yes Isuri, since rice milling is the main biggest agrarian in our country, need to introduce it with new technologies and need to educate rice millers on new trends and new harvesting systems to the farmers with contribution of government will open doors to the world market.
DeleteAs we can see Rice Mill industry requires a huge amount of labour where employers rely on several aspects when recruiting. So what advantages and disadvantages are we looking at depending on modern HRM aspects concerning employee retention?
ReplyDeleteYes Supun, in rice mill industry it is hard to recruit employees who having knowledge on work and operations, most of management are considering on employee retention. Because it avoids hiring costs, reduce training costs, it is building a skilled and experienced employee, retention activity fosters loyalty towards the organization amongst employees, encourages friendly environment and fosters bonding amongst employees, facilitates smooth workflow of internal processes, increases the quantity of work delivered, enhances the quality of the work produced and it increases revenue for the organization.
DeleteI think promoting groupism amongst old employees which creates an insecure environment for new employees, improper mixing of staff affects productivity and ensures poor quality of work, excessive liberty to staff just to maintain work flow affects quantity and quality both, flexible work timings rarely justify the work delivered, retaining non-delivering staff kills the productivity and creativity of knowledgeable employees, retaining spoon-fed and complaining employees add to the cost of the organization, affluent employees who do not require a job, rarely add value to the employee strength are the disadvantages of employee retention are just few examples of disadvantages related to employee retention.
As profit making institutions, rice millers target to increase their profit margins, reduce costs and are employing latest measures to sustain competition and employee retention is one of the most important tools to ensure stability in the industry as you suggesting.
Good article Malaka, Rice processing is the country's biggest agrarian industry, and its item esteem is higher than some other industry.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree with you Oshadi, since rice is our main food and most of people engage with with this industry, everyone should pay their attention on this to make high value on agrarian industry because rice milling process in our country still in backwards
ReplyDelete