Industry profile

Industry profile

A global company
with a local outlook

Darren Parris from the Milling and Grain Magazine travelled to Hiroshima in Japan to take a tour of
the Satake Corporation head quarters, and took a tour of the Satake museum and sales hall
hen you first visit Satake Corporation, it is
immediately evident that they are a company
who care about their global impact. Although
this may sound like a clich, the ethos of
caring or the satake spirit as it I known
to those at the company, is so ingrained into Satake culture, it is
overwhelming.
Satake are very proud of their heritage and close links with the
city of Hiroshima having been based there since 1896. One cannot
think of Hiroshima without remembering the very tragic events
of August 6th 1945 when at 08:15am the Enola Gay dropped the
Atomic Bomb named Little Boy on the city.
Detonating about 1,900 ft from the ground, it created a blast
equivalent to 16 kilotons of TNT killing some 80,000 people
immediately with a further 80,000 to 100,000 dying over the
coming months. I can simply say that everyone I met in Hiroshima
had a family member affected by this event.
During my visit I was taken to a beautiful memorial Peace Park
in remembrance of the lost city. The park now serves as a strong
message as well as a very proud statement for the community that
pulled together to rebuild the city.
Satake have never left Hiroshima since their inception.
Furthermore, the corporation played an integral part in supporting
the growth and rebuilding that followed the events of August 6th
1945.
Today, Satakes efforts have culminated into building a first
class globally recognised corporation which can quite simply be
summed up as The Satake Spirit. The Satake spirit is comprised
of the following sentiments:
Think nothing is impossible
Be intellectually humble
Understand the hearts and minds around you.
If you are a miller and you think of Satake, you would be
forgiven for thinking of them primarily as an optical sorting
74 | Milling and Grain

company. Having spent a week in Japan, I would like to expand

upon this.

A company with 119 years of history

When you take into account the Satake Spirit and learn about
Satakes future aspirations, their drive comes from a continued
commitment to improving the health of a global population
through superior taste and nutrition.
To explain where Satake are today, it is important to look back
at what Satake has achieved over the last century looking at their
unbridled list of Firsts and unsurpassed list of Awards.
Undoubtedly this list of firsts and plethora of awards is
impressive. The global awards truly underpin the drive for
excellence that you witness at every level. Since its inception,
Stake now has 12 global offices servicing over 150 countries with
just under 3,000 employees.
With between 50 percent to 98 percent of the Global Rice Mills
market, depending on the region, there is no doubt as to why they
are the number one choice for many millers.
And of course its not just rice, Satake has five sectors to its
business, which are:
1 Rice Milling, which includes everything from Laboratory
Equipment, Farm Processing Machinery, Conditioning and
storing through to rice milling for both food and breweries.
2 Wheat & Corn, which includes debranning machines, maize
degermer, rollermills through to the famous PeriTec Flour
Milling Plant
3 Food, which includes Rakumeshi Packed Rice, Instant rice,
Kitchen Rice Mill to Instant Pasta.
4 Environmental Systems, which includes Biomass, composting
plants, snow utilisation facility to biomass boilers.
5 Industrial Machinery, which includes Plastic recycling systems,
Optical sorters, plastic Pellet Polishers to the Satake Induction
Motor (SIM).

F
An interview with

Kazuyuki
Kihara
Senior Managing
Director

I would like to start with your history - Over

the years Satake has won many awards such
as Blue Ribbon and the Order of the Rising
Sun. I understand the Emperor gave the
latter? Are there any other awards Satake
are working towards?
The highest prize we have been given was from
the Emperor. It was given for the contribution
Satake made to advancements in technology
for over a century. It was not given just to the
president and CEO, but to the whole company.
This was a company wide award.
What new innovations are you looking at?
At its founding, Satake developed the
machinery for the production of sake. As you
probably know only the very centre of the rice
is used for making sake, the outside is waste.
Before Satake developed and engineered the
machinery for the production of sake, it was all
milled by hand. So Satake tried to modernise

this process with the invention of the first

power driven rice milling machine.
So we now take care of many different types of
grains, but for the purpose of this conversation
I will focus on rice. The biggest function of
the rice mill in the past was to produce milled
rice. However as the economy grew, the needs
of the consumer changed and whiter rice was
less important and no longer the key, because
people began looking towards the functionality
or taste of rice.
So we had to find solutions and develop
machinery to meet the demands of the diversity
of the market.
From its foundation Satake was a producer of
sake machinery. Only the centre of the rice
is used for sake. This was milled by hand.
Satake innovated the automation of the milling
process.
One of the innovations with respect to
functionality concerns GABA (GammaAminobutyric Acid). Our latest technology is
able to enrich the GABA from the rice, nothing
is added, and this is 100 percent natural.
So each country in the world has different
consumer demands and therefore different
priorities. Examples of their priorities are:
a) Quantities or Yield, this is the most
important priority for a developing country
as many people are starving and need
feeding.
b) Appearance, for many milled rice is better.
c) Then as I have already said, palatability
and taste functionality is what is demanded
in more modern societies.

We have installed rice mills in Malaysia,

Vietnam and Myanmar in recent years. These
countries are still very much focused on
yield and appearance, they are not focused
on functionality, taste or palatability. Their
priority is to supply enough rice to the
population.
On Wednesday you will go to a rice mill
near Tokyo, during your visit you will see
no polishing machinery just to improve the
appearance of the rice. Here in Japan the
appearance is taken for granted.
Japan is now more focused on factors such as
functionality, taste, palatability and of course
not forgetting safety and reliability which
contributes towards peace of mind.
These are the advancements in technology we
have made with rice.
Our advancement in England in 1991 just after
our purchase of Henry Simon and Thomas
Robinson is part of our strategy to expand our
product from just rice to the other grain and
flours, particularly wheat flour.
We are proud that we have been able to take
our rice technology and enhance it for the
wheat flour milling industry. The traditional
wheat milling process is a gradual system of
grinding, purification and sieving to separate
flour from bran, but our technology the PeriTec
is debranning, so it just removes the outer
bran layers of the wheat kernel bran and this
is a break through in the wheat flour milling
industry.
The wheat industry has gradually accepted and
adopted these de-branning advancements

March 2015 | 75

Industry profile

Heritage
While taking a tour of the
Satake museum it is easy to
see the care and attention to
detail that is the foundations
of the company. You can view
the artifacts and read about the
exploits through the history
of Satake from 1896 to the
present day, which in itself sits
beside an expansive wall of
grains that can be processed
through their optical sorters.
As impressive as it is,
adjoining the museum are
a succession of laboratories
and in the main hall a full
size working rice mill which
is onsite and available to
demonstrate to customers the
many Satake machines that are
available in the rice milling
process.

The history
1908
The first Vertical
Abrasive Rice
Milling Machine is
invented
1896
Riichi Satake
invents the
first power
driven
rice-milling
machine

Below is just a small selection of the highlights

from Satakes history in the industry

1950
Toshihiko Satake awarded
the Blue Ribbon Medal of
Honour for achievements
in Rice Milling
1940
The first ever
concise
book is
written on
The Theory
of Rice
Milling

1944
Riichi Satake is the first
person from the foodprocessing sector to be
awarded the Blue Ribbon
Medal of Honour - Japans
highest civil award

The sales hall

After touring the very impressive factory, I spent some time in the sales hall. I can
only describe this as their very own exhibition arena. It is like attending Euro Tier,
or Victam or VIV, but in this arena every exhibitor is Satake, every machine is on
display and can be tested or demonstrated.
It is here I challenged the Satake team to demonstrate to me the Grand Optical
Sorter. I collected a bowl of inferior grains. I weighed them out to be exactly
1lb (0.4535kg). I then mixed them in with a very large container of good quality
grain; we made sure it was well mixed in.
We then poured the container into the optical sorter and set it to work.
In just over one minute all the grains had passed through and the optical sorter
had split out the inferior grains from the good. We poured the inferior grains back
into a bowl and it weighed exactly 1lb. This was a very impressive demonstration
and showed a 100 percent sort rate.
This was a very impressive end to the tour of the Satake Head Quarters.
I would like to thank Takaya Hirase and Hiromi Saita for looking after me and
hosting me throughout the visit to Japan.
After my visit to Satake, I headed north of Tokyo and out to the country to visit
an ultra modern rice mill. My interview with the rice mill manager and my tour of
the rice mill will be appearing in an up-coming edition of Milling and Grain.
76 | Milling and Grain

1956
The first ever
One-Pass
Rice Milling
Machine is
invented

1968
The first Tempering
Dryer is developed
that dries rice up to
10 times faster
1964
The first three
Country
Elevators are
built

1974
The first husker
with oscillating
paddy
separator is
invented The
Rice Master

1986
The worlds
first Rice Taste
Analyser is
produced
1988
Toshihiko Satake
Awarded a
Doctorate of
Agriculture from
University of
Tokyo

1993
Toshihiko Satake
Awarded a Doctorate
of Agriculture from Tokyo
University of Agriculture
1989
The worlds first
AC motor with
high torque and
low current is
developed

1995
The first consumer
quick rice is
introduced to the
market Magic Rice
1994
Their Imperial Highness
Prince & Princess
Hitachi honour Satake
by a visit to their Head
Office

2002
Robert S. Satake receives
the Mori Engineering Award
from Japanese Society of
Agricultural Machinery
2000
The first rinse free
rice production
system is launched
New Tasty White
Process

2009
The company
receives the
Engineering and
Technology Award

2013
The company receives
the Economy, Trade
and Industry Ministers
Award for Intellectual
Property Merit

Live colour sorter demo

Staff from Satake demonstrate the colour sorting

system in the Satake sales hall

March 2015 | 77