Next Generation Rice Processing

Achieving optimal efficiency in the post harvest handling and processing of rice is a ubiquitous challenge for China's agri-food sector. Rice is the staple food of 2/3 of population & it produces c. 1.3bn of quality rice p/a. This is insufficient to meet the aggressive population (13M p/a). This is due to land pressure & inefficient milling process handling resulting in an average 50% grain losses in machine batch processing. There are 6000 medium large mills across China operating at 50-60% efficiency rates. Conventional milling machines are manually operated & have no mechanism to responding to process variants (temperature, machine failures, contaminants) that can result in a whole milled batch being ruined. The project aims to develop a novel digital milling processes, supported by AI software platform that will intuitively respond & adapt to potential process failures, reduce milled waste & inject an additional 3MT of high quality rice (worth an additional £1.2bn to regional farming communities) into Chinese food chain p/a. 100% uptake would deliver 40MT (worth £12M p/a). This will be supported by a new business model, and education programme to support technology uptake and changes in work practice.