Agroalimentare Sud main business is the transformation of two-row barley into beer malt. The plant processing capacity is about 50,000 tons of barley a year to get 36,000 tons of finished product.
Production
Every year in June, at harvest time, the barley from the fields is taken straight to the 70 hermetic silos of the Agroalimentare Sud plant, to be immediately chilled and stored at low temperature, a method that, doing away with insecticides and pesticides, ensures product integrity and the absence of potentially harmful residues.
Seeds are then checked, selected as to size and cleaned of any foreign bodies to start germination allowing the following solubilisation and maltose extraction process.
Two days’ mashing in water at controlled temperature, with frequent changes and input of oxygen, give the product optimum humidity.
Then gigantic helicoidal screws mix, lift and transfer the cereal into five germination tanks where the product is left for five days at a controlled temperature.
A vital period, when the enzymes necessary for the production of wort develop, followed by the drying process.
The drying temperature will distinguish the malt and, consequently, the beer:
at 80°C the Pilsen-type for lager, at higher temperatures the Vienna-type, over 103°C the Monaco-type, up to 250°C for the black malt used for stout.
When drying is completed a degerminator machine gets rid of germ and rootlets.
At this point one hundred tons of malt are stored every day, ready for delivery. It’s the breweries that grind the seeds and use the flour to create their exclusive beer, irrespectively of whether it’s lager or stout.
The only Italian independent malthouse, the San Nicola di Melfi plant supplies a product that is appreciated and sought after by all Italian breweries above all for its high quality value.
As to turnover, 90% of production is Italmalt brewing malt for breweries, while the remaining 10% rests on the sale of special malts and extracts for baby foods and nutraceutics. and zootechnics. Registered as a feed raw material production business, Agroalimentare Sud supports its seed, food and malt production business with a wide range of animal feeds.
Agroalimentare Sud has obtained ISO 9001:2015, LCA for sustainable cultivation of malting barley and Kosher certifications and has adopted an organic production method that allows it to guarantee all its range also for an organic agriculture system.