Something completely different - a modern flourmill - Monday Part 2

Whilst at Laxey a few of us are allowed to tour the inside of the Laxey Glen Flour Milll, a modern mill an historic setting. The mill, owned by the Manx Government, is a working mill, grinding all the island’s corn, and responsible for all the flour used in the island’s bakeries. Like all old flour mill it has been refitted many times in its history, not least after the occasional catastrophic fire. The last of those was in the 1940s, but the last refit was in 1999, just 7 years ago, so this is a very modern mill…
(NB Laxey Glen itself is designated as one of the IoM’s ‘National Glens’ – no time to go into that now, but there’s more info here).

It’s so modern that we have to don full health and safety gear. Here’s Dr Peter Stanier, the respected Editor of IA News, showing how this kit can completely transform a person.














It’s soon apparent that this is really is very new, with most machinery encased and invisible. The fittings are Italian, using metal roller milling technology; this ducting is on the ground floor, the mills themselves are in the traditional position on the first floor.

Though they’re hardly recognisable to anyone familiar with horizontal grindstones – these roller mills are encased, and look like something from a sci-fi film. Each unit grinds to differing fineness, gradually refining the flour further.

The whole place is computer- controlled, using a system installed even more recently than the machinery.

But there is some reassuring familiarity – the flour is still bulk-packed in sacks, each labelled with the particular blend (specialities here are Manx King, Manx Queen, Flavo etc).

And there is a traditional spiral sack-chute too (no, we weren’t allowed to play on it).

But the flour doesn’t all leave in sacks – here’s a bulk tanker filling up for Ramsey Bakery.

And here’s the machine for filling retail bags.

We were interested to find new rollers, waiting to be installed. These are imported from India – Italian machinery, Indian spare parts – what has happened to the British mill-wrighting industry??