Thoughts on the Situation of the Hungarian Milling Industry – Challenges and Possibilities

Bidló, Gábor

Keywords: overcapacity, increasing of the efficiency, vertical cooperation, creativity, quality management, Q13, Q21, R12

The Hungarian grain production could secure in every year about 5 M tons of milling wheat, but the local need of the milling industry is only 1,1 M tons and this means a safe and long-term source for the milling sector.
Already more than 100 years ago was the Hungarian milling sector a leader of the innovation and efficiency of the wheat flour production. During the last 20 years the ownership of this sector has changed, the size of the mills has increased, the number of the running mills has decreased.
In this study we summarize the production in Hungary, the situation of the milling sector and the main financial data of five selected milling companies. The main findings are that the milling sector could be divided in two parts: one is the ’big’ mills, with a daily capacity of over 200 million tons of wheat milling and the second part is the ’small’ mills with a capacity of about 50-90 tons per day.
The type of the production follows the need of the daily sales – the big bakeries need a stable and standard quality in big volumes. The smaller bakeries and pasta producers need the delivered goods in 25-50 kg bags with a delivery of 200-500 kg-s per day.
The quality management of the mills must secure the right quality wheat for their production and this needs to introduce new ways of cooperation with the farmers.
The main challenge for the mills is the concentration of the bakeries and other users of flour, the financing of the raw materials from the farmers through the mills until the end-users. This period could be up to 6 months from the purchase of the wheat until the sales of the flours.
Finally, we found that for the new solutions the education at the small mills must be improved, where the automatization is not a real option, due to the limits of financing. The automatization could be the way of the big industrial mills, but for the smaller the „hand-made” products it could be the solution with the special qualities and brands.

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