Following the products’ harvest, they should be stored in appropriate conditions. In this context, it is vital for the production’s health to make them pass through pre-cleaning units before storage. Turkey’s legal codes bar products’ cleaning before storage. This reduces the shelf life and the quality of products and also causes the loss of huge storage area. In order to prevent this loss, there should be a legal amendment.” Şahin ŞENEL Atomika Makina - Sales Engineer Atomika Makina, founded in Ankara in 1989, is the Turkish representative of the pulse processing technologies of Bühler, the leading manufacturer of grain and pulse processing technologies. Şahin Şenel, the Sales Engineer of the company which has been helping Turkish manufacturer meet Bühler’s technology since its foundation, stressed the importance of pre-cleaning and optical separation in order to reduce the waste of product and to protect the quality of the product. Saying that 85 million tons of grain is lost during storage, and 75 million tons of grain is lost during processing, Şenel warned, “In this context, it is vital for the product’s health to make them pass through pre-cleaning units before storage.” Şenel praised the support for licensed warehousing and said there is a need for some legal amendment for healthier warehousing for companies. The following is the interview of Mr. Şenel with the Miller Magazine: Can you tell us about your company and its areas of activity? Atomika Makina was established in Ankara in 1989 to operate in machinery sales and after sales service areas. Since our foundation, we have been representing Bühler Sortex’s optical separation machines along with many other types of machinery of Bühler brand. We provide service to our customers on Bühler’s behalf for many product groups such as pre-cleaning cereals and pulse before storage, cleaning facilities for seeds and cereals, drying systems for cereals and pulses, the production facility for rice, pulses elimination and sorting facilities, spice cleaning facilities. Grain is one of the most lost products after the harvest. Reduction of this loss is critically important for the food safety. Can you talk about the role of pre-cleaning at this point? Across the globe, 52 million tons of grain is lost during the harvest, 85 million tons of grain is lost during storage, and 75 million tons of grain is lost during processing. Given the hunger problem in many parts of the world and the financial burden of the wasted amount, the magnitude of the loss can be better understood. After the harvest, the product must be stored in suitable conditions. In this context, it is vital for the product’s health to make them pass through pre-cleaning units before storage. In short, pre-cleaning is the cleaning process carried out before the storage of the harvested agricultural products in the production or storage facilities. The aim of this process is to reduce the level of pollutants, dust and other pollutants, that we can call ‘rough’, to a reasonable level. This method also contributes to prolonging the shelf-life of the product by removing the toxin-containing diseased granules from the product. In recent years licensed warehousing is encouraged in Turkey. It is stated that the licensed warehouse capacity will reach 9 million 500 thousand tons from 1 million 785 thousand. Would you share your thoughts on this? Licensed warehousing activities that have risen in recent years in our country should be regarded as a crucial and positive step in the name of professionalism when considering the product losses experienced during storage. However, companies that have started operating in this developing business sector should be informed on storage, and legal hurdles should be removed from health warehousing. Turkey’s legal codes bar products’ cleaning before storage. According to legal codes, products are stored as they are received and delivered as they are. This reduces the shelf life and the quality of products while causing loss of huge storage area at the same time. Numerically speaking, an enterprise with a storage capacity of 100 thousand tons is experiencing a loss of 8 thousand tons of storage space from a stored product with a pollution rate of 8 percent. So, what are your suggestions at this point? Bühler-Schimdth Seeger, which is recognized as an authority on pre-cleaning and cleaning systems around the world, has TAS series that is used as a pre-screening and sorting machine in its product portfolio. These sieves can provide a screen surface of 48 square meters in a 12 square meter installation area and can perform very well at very high capacities such as 250 tons per hour. The high capacity achieved with these machines minimizes the time between product acceptance and storage, especially at harvest time. In addition, trieurs used for the screening of long or short grains in the cereal cleaning lines play an important role in product purification. In this context, Bühler-Schmidt Seeger Ultratrieur series machines are among the solutions we offer to our customers which can be customized on demand. Could you give us more detailed information on optical separation? We continue to lead the sector with Bühler Sortex that we have undertaken sales and after-sales services since our foundation. Firstly, the optical separation is a sortation process based on optical separation principle to separate pollutants that have the same length, shape and specific weight but cannot be separated with mechanical cleaning machines. As Bühler Sortex, we can express the last point we have made about optical separation with our Sortex B Multivision machine. Developed by superior Bühler technology, Sortex B Multivision is equipped with a patented new camera system which not only distinguishes materials with different colors but also has the ability to detect and sort out materials with different shades of the same color. In addition, Sortex B Multivision has taken the performance benchmark one step further in many additions, such as sizing and product tracking systems. As a result, Sortex continues to be a pioneer in the sector with its B series, with high capacity, separation performance, and waste product concentration. Today, the companies that use Sortex brand optic screening machines have reached the world standards and qualified to export their product.