While the mills lack millers, this training is not full in Charente-Maritime

It is a unique training center in France, and even in the entire French-speaking world. In Surgères (Charente-Maritime), the food campus includes a milling school, ENSMIC, which is celebrating its hundredth anniversary this year. The main training consists of an agricultural BTS, offered on a work-study basis. A training that is struggling to recruit, despite significant labor needs in French mills. However, this totally unknown profession can be exciting, technical and engaging. In Surgères, teaching is provided with a cutting-edge tool: a very high-level pilot mill. France Bleu La Rochelle was able to visit the premises.

The owner of the place, François Brionnet, only needs a few mouse clicks on your computerand off we go for milling: the transformation of wheat into flour. Several machines are necessary, specifies Mohamadou, first year student at ENSMIC: “There are crushers, slappers, converters and each machine has a role to do.” And the sucker in all this? “Here everything is almost automatic, but there are mills where you have to start the machines manually. And then you have to make the adjustments, prevent jams, monitor the flow rate, the output…”

“The role of the miller is to make flour mixtures”

To explain the function of the miller, the director of the Surgères food campus, Marie-Pierre Mousset, likes to use the wine metaphor : “the role of the miller is to make flour mixtures. When we make wine, we add a little merlot, such and such grape variety, etc. Here it's the same, we mix flours of different qualities to obtain the right mixture that will suit the customer And if we give biscuit flour to a baker, it will not make good bread.

This profession attracted a whole colony of Senegalese students to Surgères. There are around ten registered at ENSMIC, who came to France for higher studies in other fields. Alhoussein will soon finish his two years of training: “We didn't really know how we made the flour, we just went to the bakery to have our little bread in peace. We didn't imagine there were so many parameters and so many things to respect!”

“If you are motivated, the doors are wide open”

Alhoussein is delighted with the welcome in Surgères: “if you are motivated, really, the doors are wide open.” It must be said that labor needs are immense. “Almost all mills are recruiting”confirms Thomas, who left the Surgères school six years ago. And already responsible for the production of a mill in Haute-Garonne. “I had two retirements this year,” says the 26-year-old, “and I recruited two millers, who were not qualified at all. So you have to teach them everything from A to Z.”

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It was after a professional baccalaureate in baking that Thomas discovered the profession of miller. “I wanted to move up the chain and take an interest in raw materials, and therefore flour.” A choice that the young man does not regret for a moment. One of his classmates agrees: “the Surgères pilot mill is an exceptional tool. The young people who are here are incredibly lucky. There are plenty of small millers in France who would dream of having a production tool like this.”

Around twenty places available, at least

There are only around twenty BTS students this year. For this milling training, there would be room for at least twice as much. “Everyone buys their packet of flour, but no one asks themselves all the work that goes into it, regrets Marie-Pierre Mousset. The mills must open, that we can communicate about these professions because in fact, there are plenty of totally unknown professions.”

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