When you enter into any Rice Mill you will hear one phrase very frequently.
"REDUCE BROKENS"
Almost everyone is concerned about reducing "Brokens" at all the stages of operation. Good! Not Bad! One should be concerned about reducing "Brokens" as it brings down profitability. Brokens sells at much lesser price than whole rice grain so it pinches everyone.
Yes, but remember "Brokens" still get you some price but what about the Paddy that is lost in the system?
"Paddy Lost is Absolute Loss and Much Bigger than Brokens"
Most of the paddy is stored in Jute Bags and trust me, "Bag Storage is the most expansive storage in the world".
Have you ever counted how much Paddy you lose when you store paddy in Jute Bags??
you know, "Whatever you can't measure, you cannot improve that". Same happens with Paddy. Since Paddy Losses are not measured in a Rice Mill so nobody knows. Let me make you visualise the following losses;
Paddy losses due to paddy spillage from bags
Paddy spoiling due to Rodent Attacks
Paddy spoling due to Birds Dropping
Paddy losses due to theft and pilferage
Paddy damage due to Infestations because of ineffective fumigation
Money lost due to Slow Speed of Manual Bagged System
Money lost due to Bag Handling Costs
Money lost due to Bulk to bag conversion at mandi and bag to bulk conversion at Rice Mill.
Finally, Efficiency loss due to non-uniform feed of paddy to the mill.
So many loses but still Rice Millers are very generous and kind people and they still want to continue with most expansive methodology of paddy storage in jute bags.
Let me tell you how much they actually spend on Paddy Storage in Bags.
Paddy is stored in Bagged form in numerous Bag Stacks in all the rice mills. Stack as they say is the most economical form of Paddy Storage. Let us work out the Stack Building and Handling cost to see how much they actually spend.
Let us consider a medium size Rice Mill of 8TPH.
Per day paddy requirement of 8TPH Rice Mill = 8 TPH x 22 Hours = 176MT
Considering 300 days of operation;
Paddy Requirement for a year = 52800 MT
This means that we have to build stacks for keeping 52800 MT of paddy in bags.
A paddy stack consists of 1454 Nos of 50 Kgs Bag
Picture above shows that a Paddy Stacks generally contains 72.7 MT of Paddy. Now let us work out Stack Building and Handling Cost.
Stack Building and Cost
*Repetitions in table above means Numbers of times that particular item is reused.
Stack Handling Cost
Total Stack Building and Handling Cost
Wow!! Its Huge!! I wish I am wrong!!
You are actually spending Rs 628.32/- per MT to store paddy in bags. In comparison to Bagged Storage Silo storage is much cheaper. "You will save approx. 2.14 Crores every year when you store in Grain Silos". Trust Me.
I am sure now you will agree that "Bagged Storage is most expansive Storage".
OK, probably you will argue that "Warehouse storage is cheaper than Silo Storage".
Ok let us do a Cost Benefit Analysis of this too.
Warehouse Vs Grain Silo Capital Cost Comparison for 50000MT Paddy Storage
So in the current scenario Grain Silo is the most Economic and most Wise decision.
Finally in the end I would like to add that the day you start feeding your Rice Mill with Hopper Bottom Silos, you will find increase in production from the same day.
"Do care for Brokens, but Save Paddy More"
Great!