Re-Inventing Rice Milling for the Digital Era: a simpler, accessible, scalable, off-grid, low power and low loss rice mill

Updated Apr 01, 2019

Re-Inventing Rice Milling for the Digital Era: a simpler, accessible, scalable, off-grid, low power and low loss rice mill

www.koolmill.com

Alec Anderson

A disruptive, low power cereal (rice) milling process: an enabling technology creating shared value and empowering millers regardless of size, location or gender to deliver more food and at a higher quality with 80% less power from existing harvests.

Koolmill is recognised as the 3rd generation (nextgen) cereal (rice) milling technology. Using a super-efficient coated abrasive and internationally patented milling chambers to replace stones, screens, augers, displacement plates and air systems. Koolmill is a flexible and scalable, low power (80% power saving) cold milling process. A simple concept: rice, driven by the abrasive, circul...

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Stage 4: Transition to Scale

Koolmill is a disruptive and empowering technology. Having commercially milled >100,000 tonnes of rice (UK, USA, India and China), the challenge is overcoming the resistant, embedded culture of an antiquated global industry feeding 3.5 bn people.

Focus Areas:

Post Harvest, Processing & Production, Economic Empowerment and 13 MoreSEE ALL

Implemented In:

United Kingdom, United States, India and 1 MoreSEE ALL

Countries Implemented In

Customers

Employees

$5,000,000

Funds Raised to Date

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Problem

Rice is an antiquated and wasteful $550 billion (bn) global industry. Today, for 3.5bn people (6bn by 2050) rice is literally life. Rice production must increase by 70% (FAO) by 2050 to meet demand. Yet, each year 60 million (m) tonnes of rice is lost from farm to fork. Wasting water, resources and food: that's enough rice to feed 300m people (Asia), or 1.2bn (Africa), for a year. 180m tonnes of what's left is damaged, reducing its quality and value. The addressable annual global loss is $72bn.

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Solution

The waste of resources - water, land, power, fuel, labour, and chemicals - is unsustainable. Koolmill, pioneers of a simpler and gentler technology, addresses this global problem by minimising lost and damaged rice during processing. 200m smallholders and >1.5m medium/small mills are excluded by cost, complexity and capacity from adopting the less wasteful current “best in class” milling machines. For the first time, millers of all sizes have equal access to identical, simpler technology.

Target Beneficiaries

People: Consumers benefit from access to more food at a lower cost and higher quality. Planet: Less damaged and lost rice from existing harvests reduces the environmental impact of rice with less waste of scarce natural resources. Profit: a hand full of paddy is worth $0.25 to a smallholder. Milled it is worth $1. Empowering smallholders and smaller millers, with a viable option to produce a market leading added value product, will substantially increase annual incomes, profits and opportunity.

Mission and Vision

Koolmill is an empowering technology that will disrupt, shorten and re-balance the established rice value chain, changing the way the world is fed and contribute to 16 of the 17 SDG's. Vision: to transform an antiquated globally significant industry, move it to a sustainable future and lift millions from poverty.Mission: to make modern "best in class" milling technology available to all millers and potential millers, regardless of size, location, gender or financial limitations.

Competitive Advantage

Traditional 2nd-generation machines use high power motors to compensate for their inherent inefficiency. They are attritional, treating rice as a solid, and mechanically generate destructive pulsating milling pressures. They all do something to the rice, resulting in wasted power, heat, thermal stress, mechanical stress, lost and damaged rice (Food Loss). Koolmill is unique in that the rice is treated as a fluid. Milling chambers work with the rice to dynamically generate a gentle, consistent and controllable milling pressure. Koolmill eliminates augers, stones, screens and weighted displacement plates where much of the damage and loss occurs.

Koolmill USP’s: Low power (80% saving), low loss, low damage, low temperature milling. Simpler mills with less complex infrastructure and capital costs. Fully automatic optimised milling with access to real time data, remote monitoring and auto-tuning delivers more food and profitability from existing rice harvests.

Planned Goals and Milestones

Koolmill, a genuinely new technology, is currently applied by millers using established milling processes and knowledge. The opportunity is to redefine the entire rice milling process for the Digital Era. Improving performance on rice, making a simpler, accessible, low power, off-grid, self-powered, zero-waste, self-tuning, digital mill. Koolmill is a small particle abrading technology, the use can be extended to wheat, maize, legumes, pulses and other granular products needing surface dressing.

	Funding Goal	750,000
	Projected Cumulative Lives Impacted	350,000,000
	New Implemented Countries	Bangladesh, Philippines, Nigeria, Malaysia, Kenya, Cote d'Ivoire, Uganda, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Sri Lanka
	Recruit	6 management, 4 non-exec directors, 4 engineers, 2 admin/PA
	New Feature	Complete packaged scalable, digital milling solution with reliable storage and a new accessible pay as you mill business model, creating shared value for all stakeholders in a shortened and re-balanced value rice chain.