If you take the picturesque train journey, along the River Stour from Manningtree to Harwich, you will stop at Mistley. The repurposed 18th century mills and trade buildings still suggest a once bustling port and trade centre, and amongst them the English Diastic Malt Extract Company has stood since 1881: a mouthful that was eventually shortened to EDME Ltd in 1897.
The products produced by EDME soon became an essential ingredient of prize-winning entries at bakers’ exhibitions up and down the country.
Over the past 140 years EDME’s 3.5-acre Mistley site has undergone many transformations as the world around it has changed. This includes significant mechanisation in 1950, and a major programme of rebuilding and modernisation during the early 1990s. In more recent years, developments have included a test centre and R&D facility, state-of-the-art mixing and blending equipment, and a gluten-free mill.
EDME create natural, nutritious flours, flakes, kibbles, mixes, sprouted grains and malt extracts for the bakery and wider food industries. The raw materials used to produce these wholesome ingredients include whole cereal grains; malted wholegrains; seeds and pulses and they are champions in the development and re-introduction of ancient grains.
A skip across the River Stour, northward to Ipswich, Christy Turner’s roots were being established a little earlier in 1837, originally alongside the growing market town’s mills and port.
Both companies have evolved and developed but never strayed away from an entirely British produced product: EDME boast ‘from field to bakery’ with the ‘nothing outsourced’ reliability of Christy Turner roller mills and flaking mills at the heart of the operation.
Talking to EDME Operations Director, Gary McIlwaine, we learn a bit more about the EDME and Christy Turner history and partnership:
“EDME have worked on a number of key projects with Christy Turner over the last 3 years, with all of the Christy Turner machines an essential part of the process that produces flakes as well as kibbles”
“When it comes to flaking, we take cereal grains and put them through a process of steaming; flaking (rolling); and micronizing (toasting).”
“We use a Christy Turner steel cooker for the steaming part of the process, and our rollers in the flaking stage undergo annual refurbishments. Both equipment and servicing are incredibly essential in helping to create natural, nutritious flakes that can be used in breads, breakfast cereals, and energy bars.”
The ingredients that go through the process start as:
- Malted wheat
- Natural wheat
- Organic wheat
- Spelt wheat
- Malted rye
- Natural rye
- Pearled barley
- Malted oats
Gary explains:
“You’ll see that some of the ingredients have a ‘malted’ prefix: before the flaking process, some of the ingredients go through the malting process first - a 3-step process of steeping (soaking); germinating (sprouting); and kilning (cooking)”
Gary continues:
“We have a new stainless steel cooker from Christy Turner to replace an old 1 tonne per hour unit. The new cooker had heavy input from Christy Turner’s Technical Manager, Daniel Dormer, whose analytical approach was instrumental to the success of this project. It was delivered on time and in budget and all throughout the process, Ian and his team have been there to continually support us with it.”
Some examples of Flaking Mill servicing for EDME include:
- Annual roll refurbishments where EDME have Christy Turner engineers on site to refurbish flaking rolls as well as sending these rolls back to Christy Turner workshop for re-skimming and preparing them so they are ready to be re-installed
- Automated parts of flaking rolls installed in the last 2 years to assist the operators
Overall, Gary has been in communications with Ian over the last 3 years and can’t fault the service and the response time. It has made the team at EDME feel very valued.
Gary adds:
“I would like to wish Ian all the best in his role and thank both him and his team for their great work and support towards EDME over a number of years and I looking forward to continuing this relationship”.
Read about the Christy Turner 460 Flaking Mill that EDME deploy here
Talk to us about your grain processing and how we can help your business from a range of hammer mills, flaking mills, roller mills, pulverizers with a dedicated UK spares and service support team.
Call us on 01473 742325 -
Read more about EDME at www.edme.com
