The Canadian International Grains Institute (CIGI) is wooing Philippine millers who have gone to American wheat suppliers.
The effort is being made after a period of poor gluten strength and low protein caused millers in the Philippines to lose confidence in Canadian wheat.
Canada’s wheat producers are now working to rebuild its relationship with these buyers.
Filipino bakers recently took part in a technical exchange at the CIGI, according to The Western Producer.
The Saskatchewan paper reported that the bakers worked with Canadian experts at the Winnipeg institution to improve their processing of Canadian crops, especially Canada Western red spring (CWRS) wheat.
Canadian hard red spring wheat has upset millers and bakers in the Philippines in recent years, the paper reported, which is in sharp contrast to the highly reliable quality a few years ago.
“We encountered a bit of a quality problem with CWRS in the past,” Darwin Tatel of San Miguel Mills, Inc. said in the report.
“We hope with this training we are able to regain that confidence in CWRS,” Tatel also said.
According to The Western Producer, Tatel and many millers from around the world and within Canada began having trouble processing Canadian wheat after 2011.
The report noted that gluten strength and other quality parameters became more variable.
For millers, variability is costly because it forces them to stop and reset milling equipment, the paper explained.
The Canadian grain system has gradually addressed the problem by shunting wheat varieties that were causing the problems into a new category, according to the report.
The paper noted that the wheat industry believes that will solve the issue.
Bringing in buyers for sessions with the Canadian grain trade will help restore the faith these foreign buyers once had, said Yvonne Supeene, the head of baking technology at CIGI, in the report.
“We’re hoping they import more Canadian wheat now that they better understand the quality and the challenges that we have also overcome in the last few years,” said Supeene in the report.
Switching to other sources of wheat wasn’t ideal, so Tatel is happy to hear that Canada thinks it has its problem solved, according to The Western Producer.
The Canadian Grain Commission is responsible for monitoring and governing the quality of CWRS.