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The harvested oats are delivered by truck to the mill where they are stored in grain silos. |
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The first cleaning stage removes stalks, dust and other impurities. |
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The next cleaning stage uses sensitive machinery to remove all material that are not oats. |
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Warm air is drawn up through a sealed chamber. This gives McCann's oats its distinctive nutty flavour. |
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Before moving to the hulling stage, small undersize oats are removed by a size separator. |
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Unlike wheat, the outer casing or hull of the oat grain is inedible and must be removed. As this cannot be done by normal threshing, special machinery is used in the factory to strip off the husk. |
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A Paddy Separator (also used in the milling of rice) is used to separate the unhulled oats which are returned to the dehuller. |
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Instead of grinding the grain, which would produce flour, the groats (as the oats are called at this stage) pass through a cutting machine where rotating steel discs cut each groat into about four tiny pieces called pinhead or steel cut oats. These can be packed and sold at this stage. |
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The rolled oats or flakemeal are made by steaming the pinheads for 15 to 20 minutes. |
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The steamed pinheads are then passed through rollers to flatten them. As the steaming partially cooks the oats, rolled oats require less cooking than pinheads. |
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The rolled oats are then allowed to cool by passing cool air through the storage area. |
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Your McCanns oats are then packed and sealed in our modern packing plant. |
