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December 2009: BRAZAFRIC, PINHALENSE AND SANMAK

BRAZAFRIC, PINHALENSE AND SANMAK: 
WORLD LEADERS IN COFFEE PROCESSING MACHINERY

Brazafric Enterprises Limited has continuously represented leading manufacturers of coffee farm tools, machinery and accessories, that include machetes, folks and hoes, spades, pruning saws, pruning scissors, shade nets, nylex, jute bags and coffee processing lines for wet milling, dry processing, export processing, roasters, grinder and packaging machinery.

The offices in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Rwanda have inched the proximity to clients in order to swiftly deliver the after-sales services within time required. Over the 12 years in operation, Brazafric has strengthened relations and representation of leading and reputable manufacturers of products for the coffee farmer, processors, exporters, roasters and retailers like coffee shops.

Pinhalense and Sanmak are among the leading brands of coffee machinery supplied by Brazafric in East Africa. The continued success is attributed to product knowledge and capacity to float practical and affordable solutions to our coffee clients. The geographical location of Brazafric offices and appointed affiliates enjoy proximity to the end-users, making it practically possible to permanently guarantee swift and timely delivery of after sales services.

Brazafric is a one stop shop for the coffee sub sector in the respective Eastern African countries and the company has further progressed from being identified as a “traditional supplier” to being closely identified with coffee farmers, dealers, institutions and affiliates, hence setting out for higher horizons with the capability and capacity to identify needs and tailor-made solutions to the clientele.

Sanmak - Brazil has been in the market for 27 years, manufacturing and commercializing colour sorters. The line of products includes electronic colour sorting machines to process rice, coffee, beans, sesame seed, almonds, cashew nuts and other grains. Varied Sanmak models are operational all over the world - in the Americas, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and Europe. Currently, we boast of over 135,000 channels installed and this figure continues to grow.

Sanmak’s BS DG line has made a breakthrough to improve sorting quality standards of your product. BS DG is a bi-chromatic sorter, with digital controls that make the process of removing coloured grains more accurate and effective than with monochromatic sorters. It increases the final quality standard with a more concentrated waste outcome and adds a higher value to the product.

The Chromak BS DG series is the solution in bi-chromatic grain sorting to the markets of coffee, beans, lentils, corn and other grains or products that have a heterogeneous range of coloured defects to be removed.

Another innovative line from Sanmak is the Giga series that has  Precision - View range, specially designed and developed to meet the requirements of the markets for rice (white, cargo, parboiled and seeds), coffee, beans (black and carioquinha) and other similar grains that require sorting processes.

Pinhalense- Brazil is considered a model of efficiency, financial performance and solidity. It is sound financial indicators that allow the company to make research and development investments that generate new technologies and products. It is these sound performance indicators that allow the company to produce and deliver high quality machinery that requires little servicing, faster than any competitor. It is a combination of these indicators that stand behind the Pinhalense brand that over the years has meant performance and reliability for thousands of coffee growers and traders around the world.

Pinhalense's stand on research and development has made it possible for investment leading to the creation of a host of new machines and product lines, like the very successful “Ecoflex” concept for coffee wet milling and the unique size graders and gravity separators that have become state-of-the-art machines for dry milling. The addition of the new DMP Mucilage Remover to the Ecoflex line last year, crowned 25 years of research into the mechanical removal of mucilage, an effort that gave birth to another two earlier machines that were market leaders at their respective times. A new breakthrough in wet milling became a reality last year with the launching of a new machine that made a major contribution to water saving and quality improvement in wet milling - the small compact ecoflex wet milling unit for small holders and small central mills.

State-of-the-art Coffee Pulping: Screen Pulpers

Screen pulper is the correct technical name of the machine that is better known as a green/ unripe/ immature cherry separator. Pulp removal is very gentle in a process that is not very different from pressing each and every cherry with the fingers. Parchment produced by a screen pulper - the least aggressive pulper ever designed, causes less physical damage, if any and preserves coffee quality better than any other pulper in the market today. The addition of the double drum pulp separator and repasser was another landmark in coffee pulping technology because it greatly enhanced the separation of pulp from parchment and ensured that practically no parchment would be lost with the pulp.

The new reduced water consumption screen pulper is already a standard component of the new compact wet mills for 500 to 1,000 kilogram cherry per hour output and the water consumption in the screen pulpers has been reduced by 75% to 0.20 - 0.25 litres of water per kilogram of cherry or about 1 litre of water per kilogram of dry parchment. It is for all the above reasons that screen pulpers have become the state-of-the-art in coffee pulping machines.

The most recent evidence comes from East Africa, a region known for the outstanding quality of its washed Arabicas, where there are over 100 Pinhalense wet milling lines in operation. Clients using Pinhalense pulpers won 33% of the awards in Rwanda's “2008 Cup of Excellence” Competition, including first and third places. At the electronic auction held on 23rd October 2008, the winning coffee was sold for USD. 18 per pound (USD. 2,370 per 60 kilogram bag). The 8 lots pulped in Pinhalense equipment accounted for about 40% of the total proceeds of the auction (see more at www.cupofexcellence.org).

Furthermore, many of Pinhalense’s clients in Kenya acknowledge the extent to which screen pulpers avoid damage to parchment in wet mills supplied to them. It is absolutely clear and evident that screen pulpers with double drum pulp separators are much superior to both single drum vertical pulpers and disc pulpers.

Compact Ecoflex units for small growers and small central mills:

The ecoflex concept of wet mills combines individual machines – mechanical siphons, pulpers and mucilage removers according to the clients’ needs. The success of the ecoflex concept has led Pinhalense to further develop the system to now have a small single machine that combines in the same structure all components that small growers or small central mills require. Driven by a single electric motor or stationary engine, the new Ecoflex machines are delivered fully assembled and ready to operate. Individual components not included in the set originally purchased may be added later and assembled on the site by the users themselves.

Designed to for a capacity of 500 to 1,000 kg/hour of fresh coffee cherries, the most basic compact Ecoflex wet milling set has only a double-cylinder vertical pulper. The most complete compact ecoflex wet mill has the following parts:

• a new water-saving screen pulper
• a vertical pulp separator
• a rotary screen parchment separator, and
• a mucilage remover

All intermediate configurations are supplied according to the users' needs and requirements and always delivered fully assembled and ready to use. Basic configurations may be upgraded by adding any of the components listed above, which may be easily assembled on the site with the help of bolts and nuts only.

Although the small compact Ecoflex wet mills have been developed specifically for small processors (small growers and/or small central mills), they are strongly built with a solid structure and long lasting mobile and consumable parts, in order to work continuously for long daily journeys and to operate for the 10 - 15 years that a Pinhalense wet mill is expected to last. It is small, compact and with the same high technology, superb performance and long useful life that is incorporated into the larger Pinhalense machines.

The logistics and efficiency of flow and project design:

Along side with machinery research and development, it is a must to mention Pinhalense’s project and logistics development throughout the years.

Pinhalense has in the past introduced several pieces of equipment that contribute to make the coffee production and supply chain more efficient, from farm to harbour. However one always forgets to talk about the “hidden heroes” behind a successful coffee mill: the flow design, the engineering project itself and the handling equipment (elevators, conveyors, silos, scales, loading equipment and others). They ensure that coffee flows smoothly and efficiently from the reception of raw materials to the dispatching of finished products.

It is a saying at Pinhalense that 50% of the success of a coffee mill depends on the machines themselves and the other 50% depends on the product flow - how the machines are interconnected. It is true that if excellent machines are not properly interconnected they cannot deliver what they are designed to do and this results in a poor mill. Likewise, low performance machines cannot make a well designed flow perform satisfactorily. A balance must exist between the quality of the machines and the efficiency of the flow to ensure the success of the project.

Pinhalense's experience in the design of coffee mills is unique and unparalleled by any other company in the world. In 58 years, Pinhalense has designed over 15,000 coffee mills of all sizes for more than 70 countries on the 5 continents.

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