Javier Lozano
Product Manager
Automation & Digital Services
Bühler AG

Molino Quaglia has been producing wheat flour for more than 100 years in the heart of the Veneto region in Este in Northeastern Italy. The family-owned and -run company perfectly embodies the journey of countless mills around the world; from water-powered grinding stones to high-tech production facilities. With their latest upgrade to the plant automation system Mercury MES and by connecting their operations to Bühler Insights, Molino Quaglia is now harvesting the full potential of digital solutions within their mill.

The appreciation of great quality food is deeply ingrained in the lifestyle of the more than 60 million Italians on the peninsula. From business meetings to family gatherings, food plays a key role and unites people from the deep south all the way to the Italian Alps in the north. At Molino Quaglia, the three siblings Andrea, Lucio, and Chiara dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that millions of consumers get the main ingredient that put Italy on food menus across the globe: high quality wheat flour. They are running the operations of Molino Quaglia in the third generation and live up to the company’s motto: “Dove la farina diventa arte” – where flour becomes art. 

As Lucio Quaglia walks past the old grinding stone from 1914 in Molino Quaglia’s flour training and application center and makes his way up to the modern pizza training rooms, it almost feels as if he just time-travelled through 100 years of company history. “Our grandfather founded Molino Quaglia in 1914. There was no electricity out there, so the grinding stones were placed on rafts and powered by the Adige river,” says Quaglia. His grandfather, Angelo Quaglia, moved operations to Vighizzolo d’Este in 1937, 40 kilometers south of Padova. “My father Annito then modernized the mill and turned it into an industrial-scale operation from 1947 onward. My brother, my sister and me had the privilege of growing up with the mill,” he recalls.

Fast forward to 2024, and the mill still stands in Vighizzolo d’Este, grinding the same wheat, catering to the same bakeries, restaurants, and private households the Quaglia’s have for generations. The name, however, is new. Their most famous brand is called “Petra”, and just like countless Italian food traditions that conquered the world from small villages, Petra is sold globally. 

A holistic approach to flour milling

“We put a strong focus on our supply chains. Whenever possible, we get our wheat from local farmers, who follow strict agriculture practices, and the same applies to our international suppliers. Quality starts on the farmer’s field, and we’re very happy that they share the same values as we do,” explains Lucio Quaglia. It’s safe to say that the family lives and breathes flour. In 2002, they renovated the old mill building across the street of the current operations and built a comprehensive flour school called “Il Laboratorio” consisting of the Università della Pizza, Accademia del Pane, PizzaUp and Pasticceria Dinamica. It’s a unique facility where attendees deepen their knowledge of flour handling and processing into seemingly endless varieties of bread, pasta, or pizza. 

Across the street, the mill runs like clockwork. Molino Quaglia invested smartly into the latest flour milling equipment over the past years and now reap the benefits of reliable operations from intake to cleaning, sorting, milling, and packaging. The latest generation of Bühler sorting technology, SORTEX H SpectraVision, is a prime example of the company’s commitment to the highest quality across the value chain. The newly designed in-house full-color cameras provide the best color differentiation for the subtlest of color defects, while new InGaAs cameras take foreign matter detection to new levels. 

Changing the game

The three siblings envisioned their mill to fully leverage the opportunities of digitalization and automation. “We set out to change the historical course of the mill. Everybody in the milling industry knows that each grain matters, so we wanted to get the latest technologies to improve our operations to an unprecedented level. That’s why we reached out to Bühler around three years ago,” recalls Lucio Quaglia. 

When Roberto Libertini, Automation and Digitalization Sales Support at Bühler, received the call from Molino Quaglia, he immediately got in his car and took the two-hour journey to visit Lucio Quaglia and his team in person. “The upgrade to our new plant automation system Mercury MES was a very exciting project. Molino Quaglia places such a big emphasis on quality and process improvement and were very open to adding digital solutions into their operations, so we were talking eye-to-eye from the beginning,” he remembers. 

Roberto Libertini and his colleagues got straight to work together with the milling team of Molino Quaglia, lead by Head Miller Gianluca Sinigaglia. Keeping plant downtime to a minimum was a key requirement – not an easy task given the strict working conditions during Covid-19 in the fall of 2021. “We all stuck together with the same goal. This approach created a great team spirit and enabled us to switch from the previous automation system, WinCos, to Mercury MES as efficiently as possible,” says Sinigaglia. The mill was up and running again in less than 3 days  – and the famous “Petra” flour bags were on their way again to all four corners of the world. 

A silent guardian

After two and a half years in operation, the question is what has changed for Gianluca Sinigaglia and his team? “It’s like working with an invisible helper who is always monitoring and reporting every step of our operations. All the data is fed into one easy-to-use dashboard, and if something goes wrong, we get notified immediately and can act where needed. This reduces food loss and financial loss – and it gives our team more time to focus on the quality of our flour rather than carrying out manual tasks inside the mill,” he adds.

The mill produces up to 400 tonnes of flour per day and runs autonomously on the weekend. Such a level of automation is only possible by leveraging the full scope of digital solutions. “We connected all the processes to Mercury MES via our digital platform Bühler Insights. Every single parameter of the mill is sent to Bühler Insights, where data is analyzed in real time and any deviations are reported immediately to the miller in charge via push notifications,” explains Javier Lozano, Product Manager Automation & Digital Services at Bühler. “Traditionally, we used to react to issues that happened in the mill. Now, we prevent those thanks to countless data points,” he adds. 

Bühler’s Temperature and Vibration Management (TVM) is a key element of this digital reflection of the milling operations. Sensors inside the roller stand analyze grinding temperature distribution and how the vibrations are developing. Gianluca Sinigaglia receives real time information of the grinding performance of the 16 Diorit roller mills on his tablet, allowing him to reduce his teams’ onsite process checks and spend more time focusing on product quality and improving overall operations. “A couple of years ago, we couldn’t imagine benefiting from this level of automation and digitalization. Today, it’s become second nature to us, enabling us to increase efficiency in every aspect of our milling operations. We reduced downtime, lowered our energy costs, and developed an even better understanding of all processes from intake all the way to packaging,” he explains. 

Combining art and technology

With their operations running smoothly 24/7, the visitor wonders what’s next for Molino Quaglia? Lucio Quaglia knows the answer based on his decades of experience in ensuring his family’s legacy thrives in a highly competitive market. “A mill and the people running it should never stand still and be satisfied with the status quo. Supply chain issues, the effects of climate change, or energy costs are just a few challenges we have to meet. With our current set up with Mercury MES at the heart of our operations, we’re perfectly equipped to tackle these challenges head on and turn them into opportunities for Molino Quaglia. At the end of the day, we feel that we have an obligation to provide high quality flour to millions of consumers 365 days a year” he says. 

As the staff on Molino Quaglia make their way home, the mill continues to grind wheat as reliably as ever. A true landmark in the small town of Vighizzolo d’Este against the backdrop of the picturesque landscape of the Veneto region with its neatly aligned wheat fields, creeks, and the Eugenean hills softly rising in the north, the mill resembles Molino Quaglia’s carefully balanced act of combining the ancient art of flour milling with the most modern digital solutions.