Malteries Franco-Belges

Malteries Franco-Belges:

Malteries Franco-Belges (MFB) is a division of the Soufflet group, one of France's leading grain companies. MFB has many malting plants in Europe, one of them is located in Pithiviers near Paris in France. With its production of 600,000 tons per year, makes it the largest producer of the brewing malt in France. Many breweries use Franco-Belges green malt as a high quality raw material for their production of beer.

Soufflet Groupe malting plant in Pithiviers, France

MFB oversees the entire production process, from seed selection, to supply malt to the breweries. For each variety of barley, the malting plant uses a special malting process. This makes it possible to transfer the unique characteristics of each variety of barley to green malt. In addition, company provides cultivation of malting barley cultivars. Cultivars are constantly being tested in more than twenty trial fields. Malting plant also provides its seed to local farmers.

Franco-Belges malting plant in Pithiviers cooperates closely with other French malting plants in Champagne, Lorraine, Beauce-Gatinais a Bourgogne. Companies share their best barley-growing areas in France and use them for cultivation and growing of the malting barley. Malteries Franco-Belges belongs to the largest supplier of the green malt in the world. Its customers are well-known breweries like Heineken, Carlsberg, Interbrew, Paulaner, Lowenbrau, Murphy's, Sapporo and many more.

A Steep filling with grain

Description of the implementation:

In 2007, a new SCADA-based Control System of brewing malt production was implemented in malting plant in Pithiviers, France. Whole contract was carried out by Czech company PROTECO s.r.o. Control System, installed in the malting plant, consists of one Tecomat TC700 PLC device located in the distribution box and one operator panel TOUCH51 with touch screen used for control of production process. Communication between Tecomat PLC and operator panel is provided over the Ethernet.

Control and visualization is provided by the Reliance SCADA/HMI System installed on the operator panel. Operators can control the production of brewing malt over several visualization windows which can be displayed on the operator panel. For example, Reliance provides visualization of the following technologies: steeping, germination, kilning, expedition, energy consumption, burners, etc. Reliance also provides display historical alarms/events, trends or display failures of any device or machine. The Reliance Runtime Control software and visualization windows are completely localized to French language.

Visualization of the brewing malt production

Expedition of the brewing malt

Historical alarms/events