From the favorite pandesal from your neighborhood bakery to the elegant creations by top pastry chefs, one ingredient is crucial: high-grade flour. And, with its status as one of the country’s top flour millers, there’s a good chance that the flour used to make your favorite baked goods came from Universal Robina Corporation (URC) Flour and Pasta Division.
To meet the country’s growing demand for high-grade flour, the company has inaugurated a new mill in Davao, the only one in southern Mindanao.
URC Chairman Lance Y. Gokongwei delivering his remarks at the inauguration of the newly expanded flour plant in Sasa, Davao, on March 21, 2019.
JG Summit President and CEO Lance Y. Gokongwei delivered a speech during the mill’s formal inauguration on March 21, in Sasa, Davao. The concurrent Chairman of URC noted how Davao was the site of URC’s first investment outside of Metro Manila, when it opened a flourmill in 1993. “Davao has always been a very welcoming place for business. Through the years we’ve had a very good relationship, and a very healthy relationship with the local community, and this has enabled us to develop the continued confidence to keep on investing in Davao.”
The newly unveiled flour mill has a capacity of 600 metric tons per day, which triples the previous milling capacity of the facility (300 metric tons) to 900 metric tons per day. That brings URC’s total milling capacity to 2,150 metric tons, including output from its Pasig mill.
Ellison Dean C. Lee, Vice President and Business Unit General Manager, URC Flour Division; Davao City Vice Mayor Bernard Al-ag; Lance Y. Gokongwei, URC Chairman; and Irwin C. Lee, URC President & CEO.
The expanded capacity will serve not only the growing demand in the Davao region but also the entire Visayas-Mindanao area, and most importantly, “We are also going to use our Davao flour mill as an export base, particularly to the rest of the ASEAN,” Gokongwei said.
Davao City Mayor Bernard Al-ag and URC Chairman Lance Y. Gokongwei power up the new flour mill.
Designed and supplied by Swiss tech firm Buhler, the new plant is among the most modern to come online.
It is fully automated, from wheat intake to bagged flour palletizing. It uses state-of-the-art equipment and machines, including longer roller mills, plant sifter and purifier that further enhance the quality of the wheat and flour processed at the facility.
URC Flour employees pose with Chairman Lance Y. Gokongwei; Ellison Dean C. Lee, Vice President Business Unit General Manager, Flour Division; President and CEO Irwin C. Lee; CFO Pancho del Mundo; and Davao Vice Mayor Bernard Al-ag.
The expanded capacity of the plant features milling and blending facilities and an advanced, quality-control laboratory that works on improving flour for a better yield, as well as customizing products to meet the customers’ specific needs.
The plant also has a color sorter responsible for wheat cleaning that is made possible by a custom-built high-resolution camera to detect different color variations, spot defects, and foreign materials.
Concluding his speech, Gokongwei stressed the role the local government has had in ensuring the success of the Davao operations for the past 26 years, starting from the time of its then mayor and now Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte right up to the present day with Mayor Sara Duterte. He also praised the local branch of the Department of Education, for its help with URC’s CSR efforts in supporting the communities that surround its mills. URC has adopted six schools in Davao through its Flourish Pilipinas campaign, providing multi-media toolkits for senior high-school teachers and students for their bread and pastry production.
For more information on URC and its other products, please visit www2.urc.com.ph
