Day 3 - Prestasi Flour Mill and High 5 Bread Museum and Bakery

Today we visited Interflour's Prestasi Flour Mill in Kuala Lumpur and High 5 Bread Museum and Bakery. Today's trip report comes from Gary Manning Yerecoin........

Take home points from today's tours that I would like to pass onto WA growers:
- Prestasi mill uses mostly all Australian wheat in noodle flour production due to the superior 'white' quality of the wheat, however their bread flour production uses mostly US and Canadian wheat at approximately +14% protein. The wheat from the US and Canada is much 'stronger' and allows for good volume in bread production.
- Modern cleaning facilities are allowing the mill to buy poorer quality wheat and clean it gown to the right quality. Indian wheat is poor quality but is being sold at approx $30-40 below Australian wheat and each year the quality is getting better and better. This is a threat to WA wheat producers.
- Prestasi is the only mill in Malaysia that has a closed bulk loading facility to minimize flour contamination. 60% of flour leaves the mill via bulk loading into trucks. Interflour's Indonesia mills don't have any bulk loading facilities, it's all done via bags.
- SE Asian consumers are driving quality assurance protocols that flour mills are required to adhere to and are very conscious of chemical residues in flour.
- I was amazed how clean, efficient and mechanized the High 5 Bread Bakery is.

Interesting facts and figures:
-Government sets the GP 1 kg flour price at 1.35 ringgit and then the mills receive a subsidy from the Government after they submit their cost of production figures. Currently this figure sits at 740 ringgit per tonne but will change as production figures change.
- Prestasi produce 80 brands of flour by blending approximately 20 wheat types
- Branding is managed by symbols and colours, very different to Australia where brands names for more prominent. Consumers in Asia recognize the brands symbols not names.
- Malaysians like very sweet bread and put fillings (sweet and savory) into their bread.
- No cars. Have seen in Malaysia have tow balls.