AARC is a non-profit farmers cooperative based in Culiacan, the largest province in the region of Sinaloa, in the west coast of Mexico, one of the most important agricultural areas in the Mexican country. Sinaloa produces the majority of Mexico’s high value tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers, together with maize, wheat, and pulses which are key food items for the local population. In this market, AARC stands as one of the oldest and biggest cooperatives, born in 1932 with more than 1,400 members today. This cooperative acts as an important business generator in the region, since the economic benefit of its members allows it to generate a significant number of jobs in addition, hence boosting the regional economy.

Cimbria’s contribution to this project has been driven by our consultancy attitude which allowed us to fully understand AARC’s current needs and vision for the future. It has also been fostered by the existing partnership with our sister company GSI, who had already supplied metal silos, and by our ability to provide turnkey solution and take care of the entire project. Our task, which we started last year with the development of the first technical project and which will end in March 2022, is about the development of one full processing line for beans, chickpeas and maize, with a capacity of 10 tons/hour. The processing line includes the stages of intake, fine cleaning, destoning, grading and it also incorporates the bagging equipment, which is however supplied by a local supplier. Our project, the first we made with a turnkey approach in Mexico, also included the plant design, the control system development, the ventilation system, and the dust aspiration. The whole installation has been studied to respond to the strictest requirements in terms of safety for the workers, with maximum attention to machineries, electrical tools, and the noise volume. This is particularly to be noticed as the result has been achieved with the operational support of local partners who have worked under our full control.

The production from AARC is mainly intended for the domestic market. Beans and chick peas are very much used in the traditional food in Mexico, however the internal demand is more and more quality driven and this is why the ability of selecting raw material has now become strategic.  In addition to that, the qualitative evolution of the production is also opening the doors to some neighboring foreign markets and in particular to the United States. Indeed, the business evolution doesn’t come as a surprise as the attention to quality improvement has been a long run that AARC is managing with many actions. Last but not least for instance the building of a cold storage facility beside the processing plant to store the crops is already processed.  With this growing attitude, the plant we are going to finish has already been designed for a possible extension. In the company’s forecast in fact, there is a second processing line which could handle grain or other crops and which we already reserved the space for. Our consultancy approach, together with our ability to provide a turnkey project in cooperation with local partners, in this case Luseme Ingeniería (GSI) and Tamsa (Cimbria) have been the main reason of the success of this project and the way we participated to the development of the agricultural food supply chain in Mexico, the roots and national pride of the local population.