Open house at Viking Malt in Halmstad
arrow_backTo the overview03 October 2024 | Sukup Europe A/S
Danish sausages and bread were on the menu when Viking Malt held an "open house" last Wednesday at two new large silos at the malthouse at the harbor in Halmstad in southern Sweden. Here, the employees at Viking Malt and a number of suppliers had the opportunity to see the two new large storage silos from the inside, before the silos are filled with malt.
The silos, that are being built by Sukup, are part of an upgrade of the facility that ensures a greater capacity for loading.
- With these silos, we will be able to build up storage in the silos, so that we can load 20,000 ton ships instead of 10,000 ton ships. This will both reduce transport costs and the climate footprint to the customers who can receive the large ships, Viking Malt Group CEO Kasper Madsen tells Grovvarenyt.
The malt house in Halmstad is one of the six factories belonging to Viking Malt, which produces 600,000 tons of malt annually. The factory in Halmstad is by far the largest and produces a third of this volume.
- It is the only one of the six facilities that lies directly down to the harbour, so that the malt can be sent directly from the malthouse into the ship. This means that around 75 percent of the production in Halmstad is exported either as bulk on ships or in containers and also on trucks to local Swedish breweries, Kasper Madsen says and continues:
- In addition to the two new Sukup silos, the entire transport system in and out of the silos is also being upgraded so that it can handle the large volumes. All so that Viking Malt can also be relevant and competitive in the future in relation to the international brewing industry.
10,000 cubic meter silos
The two storage silos are each 10,000 cubic metres, corresponding to being able to hold 5,000 tonnes of malt each. They will be equipped with a filling and emptying system, that will normally be able to handle 500 tonnes per hour.
- Malt is lighter and more fragile, and therefore it is driven at a lower speed, so that the capacity is approximately 300 tonnes per hour, says managing director, Jens Erik Iversen, Sukup Europe.
- In addition to the silos themselves, Viking Malt has chosen to supplement with a "sweeping auger", which scrapes the bottom of the silo completely clean. If it had been grain, it could scrape together 260 tonnes per hour. Since it is malt, it corresponds to about 170 tons per hour. It is an extremely high capacity that has not been seen with this scraping method before, Jens Erik Iversen says.
He points out that the sweeping auger not only saves manpower, but also increases safety when no manual work has to be done in the silo.
Catwalks without support
Jens Erik Iversen says that Sukup is also responsible for a number of special tasks for Viking Malt's upgrade of the plant.
- In addition to a front silo of 470 cubic metres, we have built a cone base into an existing concrete silo of 50 metres. A concrete silo that Viking Malt would like to make self-draining at a height of 13 metres. Therefore, we have built a cone into it, which hangs at this height. We are also going to start with a catwalk that goes over an unloading area and therefore has a span of 37 metres. At the same time as it sits 37 meters up in the air, Jens Erik Iversen says.
He says that it is the first time that Sukup Europe has a major task for Viking Malt.
- We are really happy about the collaboration and the good communication with Viking Malt, Jens Erik Iversen says.
From Viking Malt's side, Kasper Madsen is pleased that the collaboration with Sukup Europe has gone really well from the start and has run according to plan.
The entire project with transport system and loading equipment etc. must be completed by the end of the year, while the silos are expected to be completed at the end of October.
Six malthouses
In addition to the malthouse in Halmstad, Viking Malt has malthouses in Vordingborg (DK), in Finland, Poland and Lithuania.
Viking Malt is owned by a Finnish family and by Swedish farmers through the bulk goods company Lantmännen. The distribution of ownership is about 60 percent to the Finnish family and about 40 percent to the Lantmännen.
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Sukup Europe A/S
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