“The profitable pellet mill”

BE&E examines how to maximise a pellet mill’s profitability.
Warren Buffett is quoted as saying: ‘Price is what you pay. Value is what you get’. Never a truer statement, said BE&E. Its conveyors aren’t cheap. To which its customer replied: ‘I can’t afford cheap’. After decades in the business, this mill owner had learned that cheap costs more than quality.
In BE&E’s experience, the man is a rarity. When it comes to production equipment—pelletisers, hammer mills, conditioners—owners usually spare no expense. They see the value in such equipment, and they know the investment will pay for itself.
However, these same owners will often connect production with the cheapest-bid material handling equipment they can find and adopt inefficient methods to receive and feed material into their mill. It is understandable why they do this: conveyors, disc screens, and silos don’t produce anything, so owners will often not value like they do production equipment.
Yet these systems so often limit the profitability of their mills. To maximise profits, owners and engineers need to automate the infeed process and invest in better material...