Silobolsa, storage solution and key commercial tool

We are witnessing and experiencing the extraordinary recovery of crops after the February rains. It won’t be a record harvest, but it will be a great success. Then I am reminded of an issue that has plagued agricultural problems for many years: lack of capacity warehousing.

It was a classic of journalism. Rivers of ink thirty years ago, when production was around 40 million tons. Today we are around 150 and no one talks about it. Mr. Silobolsa, I will summon you.

The silobag It is not an Argentine invention. But its use for massive grain storage is. Born in Germany (from the Eberhart company, specialist in construction machinery), to ensile fodder. We first saw it at the 1982 Farm Progress Show, with a small group of manufacturers who have been involved in the system. Raúl Cata, a prosperous dairy farmer from Arrecifes, was about to bring a “Silopress” bagging machine. But there was no one here to make “condoms”as they were called in the corn belt when the term silobolsa wasn’t even coined here).

In the mid-90s, one of the most creative agricultural machinery entrepreneurs If I remember correctly, he invented the bagging mill to make wet corn silos. Carlo Martinez, in Tandil, he had discovered that in the United States they ground corn and placed it in a vertical silo, the famous blue Harvestore that marked the scene of Wisconsin, the Dairyland State. They were made of steel with a special treatment, a sort of enamel that allowed it resist lactic acid generated in the ensiling process. That acidity is thing It allowed for preservation, stopping microbial activity.

Some had arrived in Argentina in the 1970s. I remember that one of my first notes, when I entered Rural Clarin In 1972 it was the Milkland dairy in Copello, Laplacette. This great pioneer filled the Harvester with whole, moist sorghum ears. There he fermented. AND All you had to do was press a button to download from the bottom.feeding three rows of feeders equipped with long augers.

To Carlos Martinez In 1994 it occurred to him that the same thing could be done with a horizontal machine, which would grind and bag the cereals..

But the bag was necessary. He connected with Zacarias Klas, owner of Ipesa, which supplied polyethylene sheets to cover the bridge silos of finely chopped corn. She asked for a 6 foot bag. Always at “Zaca”. He liked challenges, so he broached the topic. He had sufficient knowledge of the polyethylene extrusion process, but he was missing the key topic: how to prepare the bag to open during the process. He researched and created the machine that produced the accordion.

Zaca’s right hand was Carlos Puiggari, which accompanied him throughout his career. He was the inventor of the enterprise sachet of milk, after convincing Pascual Mastellone of the possibility of replacing the glass container (with all its logistical complexity for returning and washing the bottles) with the sachet. We know what it meant on the dairy farm.

The silobolsa was a larger sachet. The Klas-Puiggari duo saw the wet grain silo problem with the 6-foot bag. It was a huge success, both for Ipesa and for M&S, the factory of bagger of Martínez and Stanek in Tandil. One of the most elegant patents of Argentine agricultural machinery.

Moving from wet to dry wheat was a natural consequence. Of course, bigger bags were needed. The 9 foot ones arrived, quickly. And simple bagging machines, without grinding phase. The culminating moment was the 2002 crisiswhen the exit from convertibility found farmers in a crossroads to defend the value of its grains. Now they had the chance save them and negotiate the sale without delivering the goods.

AS Not only did the storage crisis begin to resolve, but trade relationships changed. The system expanded throughout the world. Today silobags and bagging machines are exported to more than 50 countries around the world. And the story continues: new extruders are being installed in the Ipesa plant in Rio Grande which will allow the production of 10, 12 and 14 foot bags, both for cereals and forage.

Martínez continued to invent. He did the bagging machine that does not require a tractor (“Zero Energy”), which uses the force of gravity to fill the bag. And several Argentine manufacturers (Akron, Mainero, Richiger) offer complete plastic bagging, extraction and recovery systems for recycling around the world. ACA, in Cañada de Gómez, receives thousands of silobags from its producers and transforms them into lump that is processed again.

It wasn’t just a solution for the manufacturer. Also for the logistics of stocks, ports and large grain processing companies. It is also Argentina’s most important destination for the main petrochemical product, polyethylene. It is Vaca Muerta that is environmentally dignified entering the virtuous circle of the most flexible and intelligent agriculture in the world.