Mini Rice Mills

[zimba]

Looking at funding a small rice mill for family

I know the return is low but we are looking at the husk, bran for other things

and at worst it will keep my g/f brother employed

has anybody have any experience will them

are there any Thai makes etc?

[Isee]

Hi zimba,

I don't have any personal experience with rice mill's but looked at it briefly. To start with, have a look here http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Current-Rice...25&start=25 in particular post 49 onwards would be of interest to you and you will see someone there who has one. What someone uses may not necessarily be the best - so you need to do a bit of research. If I was to do it, I would look at what loss rate the local mills are producing and whether I could get a machine that can reduce that rate. If you can do that, you have 2 options available - taking a bigger scoop of rice for your troubles (returning what the local mills are returning) or marketing a lower loss rate (thus more quality rice) to the farmer to secure more work. Maybe your machine can polish the rice better to make it "beautiful more" and thus get greater interest that way. I think most on here would agree that its hard to compete directly with a thai, you are looking to produce/provide something that the locals can't for whatever reason. Sure thais can mill rice, but can they do it as efficiently and better than new mill technology?

What are your plans for the by-products? if you don't mind me asking as I'm always curious about these things. I looked into what the by-products could be used for, but maybe I'm not a very good lateral thinker

Hope the above helps in some way.

[coventry]

Why have you got to keep the g/f brother employed ? As for the rice thresher I don't know other than what I see and that's overkill in the amount of people with these machines. I heard of a farang who did exactly what you're proposing to do, brother included, and in 2 years it has never been used. They're used for approx 2 months of the year. What are you going to find the brother to do for the remaining 10 months ? Sorry if I sound negative but I think your question to be the same.

Edited March 3, 2009 by coventry

[zimba]

Thanks Isee

will read the rice posts as you suggested

the husk bran etc are for our mushrooms

pig, chooks,etc

but slowly trying to get the g/f farm organised

from machine planting, machine harvesting rice milling and storage

just trying to get rid of all the middlemen

zimba

[Gary A]

Why have you got to keep the g/f brother employed ? As for the rice thresher I don't know other than what I see and that's overkill in the amount of people with these machines. I heard of a farang who did exactly what you're proposing to do, brother included, and in 2 years it has never been used. They're used for approx 2 months of the year. What are you going to find the brother to do for the remaining 10 months ? Sorry if I sound negative but I think your question to be the same.

The thresher separates the rice from the straw. There are more steps. After the rice is threshed, it needs to have the hulls removed. In our area the hulls are mainly used to make charcoal. After the hulls are removed then the rice is milled and polished. That by product here is called rum. The rum and cracked rice is used for animal feed. If you end up with 60 percent polished rice, that is pretty good.

[coventry]

Why have you got to keep the g/f brother employed ? As for the rice thresher I don't know other than what I see and that's overkill in the amount of people with these machines. I heard of a farang who did exactly what you're proposing to do, brother included, and in 2 years it has never been used. They're used for approx 2 months of the year. What are you going to find the brother to do for the remaining 10 months ? Sorry if I sound negative but I think your question to be the same.

The thresher separates the rice from the straw. There are more steps. After the rice is threshed, it needs to have the hulls removed. In our area the hulls are mainly used to make charcoal. After the hulls are removed then the rice is milled and polished. That by product here is called rum. The rum and cracked rice is used for animal feed. If you end up with 60 percent polished rice, that is pretty good.

I apologise for using the word "thresher" .

[Isee]

Thanks Isee

will read the rice posts as you suggested

the husk bran etc are for our mushrooms

pig, chooks,etc

but slowly trying to get the g/f farm organised

from machine planting, machine harvesting rice milling and storage

just trying to get rid of all the middlemen

zimba

Excellent, thought you might be going into rice bran oil or something. Good luck with it all, not sure about the rice planting idea (but I understand the attraction of it) - are you talking solely for your gf 200 rai farm or contracting out as well?? You are talking about a half-serious $ commitment all up, hope you have things squared away. I thought about the storage thing myself as well, but I don't know enough about grading rice to know what to pay - not a problem if you are just storing your own.

Cheers

[anthoma]

2 years ago I bought a medium sized ricemachine for 200 000 bath. It has 3 knifes. The machine is produced in a small factory in Ubon city. We had 1 rai of land in the village that we didnt use for anything so we put up a house there for the ricemachine, and later we also made a small pigfarm and duckfarm there. My GF's brother put up a small house there and moved there with his familiy.

The ricemaschine was delivered with an electric engine, but we didnt have enough power in the line to use it. Every time we started the maschine the voltage dropped from 220V to 110V and the machine stopped. The electrical supplier tried everything to fixs the problem but it did not help. So we had to change to dieselengine and had to pay 10 000 bath extra for the change.

From 100 kg with rice we get 51 kg milled rice, 4 kg small/broken rice and 27 kg with lam/ram. The ram we sell for 5 bath pr. kilo and the small rice for 7. To mill 100 kg with paddyrice we used 49 bath in diesel, but this was two years ago and i dont remember the dieselprice.

We compare with another ricemachine same size but running on power and we found out that our dieselcosts was more than doble than what the guy with the power-machine had, so the clue here is to get the machine running on power.

So from my calculations you make a little bit more than 100 bath profit from 100 kg paddyrice. We also, as every other ricemachine, take 1/2 to 1 kg of rice per sack from the farmer to raise the profit.

The problem here is that there are too many of these machines in our areae. Some times we can get up to 1000 kg with rice to mill, but mostly we talk about 3-5 sacks every day, about 150 kg. My brother in law drive around with his motorbike with trolley every day to collect rice and bring it back in the evening after milling. If we get a lot of sacks my GF and me go and collect it with our pickup.

Our plan was that we should feed the pigs and the ducks with ram from the machine and if we had some left, we would sell it. We also sell the rice we take from the sacks.

Its impossible for me to say how much profit/loss we had on the machine since most of the lam went to feed the pigs and the ducks. I never saw any money from that machine and they came to me all the time to ask for money to buy diesel. After 1,5 year i was fed up bying diesel and spare parts for that machine without ever seeing any money back so we gave it all to my GF's brother in enchange for his ricefields.

I had a feeling that what ever money he got from the ricemachine, ducks and pigs he kept for himself. He always sad that the money he got he used for buying diesel. I did not believe him so my GF had huge problems with him and here family so we just decided to change the machine with his farm even i lost a lot of money on the deal.

[Somtham]

Looking at funding a small rice mill for family

I know the return is low but we are looking at the husk, bran for other things

and at worst it will keep my g/f brother employed

has anybody have any experience will them

are there any Thai makes etc?

Last year I bought a small mill for the uncle with the caveat that he would give me all the rice bran for our fish ponds. Well, after 11 months I have received on the average of 1 bag of bran per week!! The mill runs quite frequently and is capable of milling 180-200 kg per hour. Let's say the machine runs at the low end for 10 hours a week so he would mill 1800kg of which maybe 30% would be bran or 540kg yet we only see about 20kg per week. Frustrating for me.

The mill was locally made and I have attached a scan of the brochure for your info. The list price was B87k but is negotiable and I paid something less than that as the uncle does not have electricity and the unit was ordered without a motor. There have been no problems with the machine and it runs fine.

Good luck with your venture.

rgds