Quality Corn
The popularity of foods like arepas and tortillas is growing in Spain, partly because of the country’s rapidly growing Latin American community. With demand for these maize products rising, Spain’s Quality Corn saw an opportunity: Together with Bühler, they developed a groundbreaking hybrid mill that combines the processes behind the flours that are used for Mexican-style tortillas and South American arepa flatbreads.
James Badcock, November 2025
When Agustín Mariné Trías took over the family farm near Monzón, in the Huesca province, on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees in the mid-1990s, he was convinced that the local maize crop was being undervalued in its traditional uses as cattle feed and fodder. Time proved Mariné Trías right as he first shifted into production of grains for the snack industry and then into milling maize to make flour and semolina for beer brewers.
Now the 56-year-old CEO and Owner of Quality Corn believes he is again ahead of the curve by moving into milling pre-cooked maize flour for use in traditional Latin American bread making, a major growth sector in Spain due to the arrival of immigrants from Latin America in the past few decades. But the collaboration between Quality Corn and Bühler grew into an even more ambitious project: a hybrid plant that can make pre-cooked maize flour for traditional Venezuelan arepas, or prime masa nixtamalized maize flour, in which the maize grain is first subjected to a special chemical process before milling. The new plant represents a first in Europe and a new development for Bühler, and Mariné Trías is sure of Quality Corn’s direction of travel. “We have always expanded, from agriculture to specialized production and then milling. When we made the first mill here, I was down there with a screwdriver in my hand,” he says.
The story of Mariné Trías’ business endeavors mirrors the development of maize in Spain, a country where wheat has long dominated the milling industry. His father grew the crop as fodder for the livestock he also reared. In 1998, Mariné Trías signed his first deal with a Barcelona-based company to produce maize grain for popcorn, followed by further ventures in which new varieties of maize were planted to provide the raw material for other snacks including corn chips and kikos, a popular nibble in Spain made of toasted or fried grains.
“Maize in Spain in 2000 was kikos, popcorn, and nachos, then an ingredient in the form of semolina for brewing or for puffed corn snacks, plus a small market for gluten-free products such as pasta,” says Mariné Trías. He founded the company Quality Corn SA in 2012 and built what at the time was Spain’s second maize mill. It was a big jump from agriculture to industry, but he had a customer already lined up: The Barcelona beer company Damm needed locally produced quality maize for brewing.
“Investing 7 or 8 million euros in a mill was like leaping into a swimming pool, but at least with Damm on board we knew there was some water in it,” says Mariné Trías. The leap worked out well and soon Mariné Trías was looking for new ventures. His next big idea came in around 2021 and was prompted by remarkable recent changes in Spanish society sparked by a shift to mass immigration in the space of a single generation. In 1995, before the start of a decade-long economic boom that would transform the country, there were 1 million immigrants living in Spain. By 2024, that number had risen to close to 9 million – 18 percent of the population. Of these, people from mainly Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America make up almost half. Spain currently hosts some 4.2 million immigrants from South America, Central America, and the Caribbean, plus others who made the move in previous decades and are now Spanish nationals.
Technology and sustainability really can come together to use resources more carefully on the land and in the mill.
Agustín Mariné Trías,
Executive Manager at Quality Corn
Such numbers obviously point to new markets for maize products given the prevalence of maize flour in different Latin American culinary traditions, including arepas – flatbreads from Colombia and Venezuela – and tortillas, globally famed for their use in Mexican tacos and a staple throughout Central America. Today, their popularity has spread beyond the Latin American community in Spain and has an influence on the culinary habits of the whole country. This is driving demand for pre-cooked maize flour for arepas and nixtamalized maize flour for tortillas. “Today, Latin American culture, including food and music, have blended into Spain, and people’s eating and cooking habits are changing all the time,” says Mariné Trías.
The only problem for Mariné Trías was that he had no experience making such products, so he found that expertise in Luis Miguel Vivas Martínez, who he headhunted in 2021 from a pre-cooked maize flour mill in Venezuela. Vivas Martínez, who moved to Spain with his family, was signed up to become mill director of the Quality Corn facility when it was still in the planning phase. At that time Mariné Trías was still consulting with Bühler’s technologists on the new direction.
Then Vivas Martínez received a curve ball: the plant would be a unique hybrid facility for pre-cooked maize flour and also be able to do nixtamalization. This ancient process, which allows maize meal to be made into flour that can be used for dough, was first developed in Mesoamerica between 1,500BC and 1,200BC by the Aztecs and Mayans, who learned to add ash or limestone rocks to pots of maize grain. Nixtamalized maize is soaked and cooked in an alkaline solution – today limewater (calcium hydroxide) is generally used.
“I was surprised by this. I had no experience at all in nixtamalization,” says Vivas Martínez. Nor had Bühler ever designed a hybrid plant for pre-cooked and nixtamalized maize flours, but it had been developing the idea on a smaller test-level scale in Uzwil. The ambition of Quality Corn to position itself prominently in several new markets in Spain all at once meshed with Bühler’s innovative nature. “This is a key plant for Bühler – our first hybrid project of this kind,” explains Nadeem Nashashibi, Bühler Area Sales Manager for Milling. “We had one machine set up at a near-industrial level in Switzerland, so the next step was to put something like it into a real production situation.”
Bühler was eager to try out its new Prime Masa technology, a way of creating the nixtamalization effect in which maize grits – rough-ground maize kernels – are used instead of whole grains, and steam applied instead of soaking in water in an innovative process that is efficient in terms of energy and water use. “Here we could roll out the Prime Masa technology and arepa flour milling in the same plant. In fact, there are three processes, with the pre-existing Quality Corn mill effectively providing the raw material – grits and semolina – for the new processes,” says Nashashibi. The resulting plant is an important showcase for Bühler technology, combining the latest milling technology innovations and its characteristically advanced digitalization for efficient operation.
Mercury is how we communicate with the machines. We send information on what to do and data comes back from the processes, which enables us to be efficient in so many ways.
Luis Miguel Vivas Martínez,
Mill Director at Quality Corn
“It was a long process to get it right. We listened closely to the customer and there was a massive exchange of ideas. You could say it was a mutual journey of discovery, and a learning process for Bühler that will help with projects to come – hopefully including expanding Quality Corn’s facilities and for other future clients,” says Nashashibi.
Vivas Martínez agrees that the process of dialogue was long, but ultimately fruitful. “Between 2021 and 2023 I think there were 14 different plant diagrams we worked through.” Building took place between early 2023 and spring 2024, and by February 2025 the hybrid plant was installed. Finally, after the Quality Corn production team and Bühler technologists had worked together on the final set-up, test batches of product began to be processed. “We have been playing with the plant and seeing how far this R&D project can really go,” Vivas Martínez says. What he and his production team have to play with is a 20,500-cubic-meter, five-story mill, which, once it is operating at full capacity, will be able to process 100,000 tonnes of maize per year.
Quality Corn’s annual production targets are 30,000 tonnes of pre-cooked corn flour and nixtamalized flour as well as 28,000 tonnes of semolina and 6,000 tonnes of dry-milled maize flour. Vivas Martínez thinks the plant will hit peak production within two years as there is no other mill in Spain making pre-cooked corn flour for the local market.
Carlos Olivares, Bühler’s Technical Senior Sales Advisor Maize, says that installing the hybrid plant for arepa and nixtamalized flour was an exciting challenge. The key was to allow for flexibility, especially given that the customer had identified various market opportunities for finished products but did not have a precise breakdown of exactly what would be produced and in which quantities.
“With these products you are putting steam into the grain, so there are similarities but also differences, because of the alkaline solution involved in nixtamalization. We had both processes conceptualized separately but we needed to design a plant that allowed Quality Corn the flexibility to make one product or the other as it meets growing demands in Spain and Europe,” Olivares explains. “On top of this, the plant is an annex to an existing mill, so we had to avoid affecting the ongoing operations.”
Key to flexibility and finding the right processes is Mercury MES (Manufacturing Execution System), Bühler’s digital operating system, which uses sensor technology to control the different production aspects of the plant from raw material storage to processing. “With Mercury installed, this plant can be operated by one person,” says Vivas Martínez. But it is much more than a tool that saves on manpower.
Olivares explains how, as the millers seek out the methods that will produce the exact results desired, Mercury allows them to create different recipes – settings plant operators can store and later repeat with precision, affecting parameters that include temperature, pressure flows, air pressure, and retention time for each product. This means quality can be guaranteed and time saved in switches between products and processes.
Olivares points out that the real-time measuring offered by sensors feeding data into Mercury means the miller can get constant and exact readings on product parameters such as fat and water in the maize flour. Minimum levels can be ensured and excesses avoided, leading to more efficient exploitation of the raw material and, ultimately, greater profit margins.
It was a mutual journey of discovery, and a learning process for Bühler that will help with projects to come.
Nadeem Nashashibi,
Bühler Area Sales Manager for Milling
“Mercury is how we communicate with the machines. We send information on what to do and data comes back from the processes, which allows us to be efficient in so many ways, such as with use of power depending on production at a given time,” says Vivas Martínez. “It even calculates which problems are critical and must be addressed immediately, and which ones can be left for a less busy moment.”
All of the equipment is from Bühler – most importantly for the process, the flaker and steamer, but also the sifters, de-stoner, Antares roller mills, and more. Crucial to any maize operation is avoiding the entry of grain affected by mycotoxins. These are naturally occurring by-products of the metabolism of molds that can harm humans, pets, or livestock if consumed in contaminated food or feed. Bühler’s SORTEX LumoVision optical sorter identifies and separates grains with visual mold signatures.
As well as making quality food, Quality Corn aims for the highest standards of sustainable production. The use of steam for the pre-cooked flour and in the prime masa nixtamalization leads to a 90 percent saving in water use and 50 percent less energy, but it still needs to be heated. Instead of using a gas-fueled system, the mill has teamed up with a specialist maker of biomass boilers. Maize plants after harvesting account for much of the biomass, together with brushwood from local forestry management and discarded wooden crates and pallets. The mill has enough solar panels installed to be self-sufficient in energy once battery storage technology has scaled sufficiently to be economical.
Despite having become a major presence in the milling industry, Quality Corn remains connected to the land and manages 20,000 hectares as well as working with independent farmers. Mariné Trías believes that starting in the fields before moving into the food industry gives him the advantage of a rounded view. “Industry doesn’t understand agriculture and vice versa,” he says. “Generally, mill owners know about milling, not farming; all they say to farmers is ‘give me more tonnes for less money’.” Mariné Trías, by contrast, aims to help farmers he works with, in Spain and France, to thrive through the use of technology. “There was no tech around when I was farming, sitting on my tractor. Now there are a thousand applications and it’s hard for farmers to know which will help them; we select just a few,” he says.
One of the latest developments Mariné Trías is most excited about is an efficient way to rid maize fields of the plant Datura stramonium, more commonly known as jimson weed, an invasive species whose seeds contain the harmful drug scopolamine, the presence of which can invalidate yields. “If a farmer saw this plant, he would automatically spray pesticide across his land, with the consequent cost for him and the environment,” Mariné Trías says.
Quality Corn is working with a US tech company that uses drones to take millions of images of maize fields, coupled with software that can distinguish the harmful weeds and create detailed maps of where they are. These maps with GPS coordinates can be shared with the drivers of harvesters who inspect for jimson weed among crops and can even be fed into larger drones that deliver doses of herbicide at the points affected. “Technology and sustainability really can come together to use resources more carefully on the land and in the mill,” says Mariné Trías.
Who: Quality Corn SA
Where: Huesca, Spain
When: Founded in 2012.
What: Quality Corn produces nixtamalized corn flour (tortillas), pre-cooked maize flour (arepas), maize semolina, and dry-milled maize flour.
Customers: The company serves globally renowned customers across Spain and abroad.
Bühler: Quality Corn benefits from degerminator, flaker, LumoVision, SORTEX optical sorters, Mercury MES, NIR-sensors, Bühler Insights, and ProPlant preventive maintenance from Bühler.
Gupfenstrasse 5
Uzwil
9240
Switzerland
