Castellmühle

The milling company GoodMills commissioned the Vienna office of ATP architects engineers to provide integrated design services for Europe’s most modern mill due to its many years of experience of food production. The state-of-the-art plant has an annual milling capacity of 408,000 tons of grain and sets new standards for product safety, hygiene, and energy effi-ciency that far surpass any statutory requirements.

In order to optimally support the core processes of the complex – the mil-ling of wheat and rye and the delivery and distribution of grain and flour – ATP’s design team designed a simple, closed complex, whose form fully follows its function. The bulkier building elements (preliminary cleaning plant and grain silo) are arranged to permit trimodal goods handling. This means that the grain can be delivered via all modes of transport: train, truck, and ship.

A special challenge to the design and building processes was the slipform construction method, which was combined with conventional reinforced concrete construction. The reasons for adopting this approach to the use of formwork included the rapid progress on site that it permits. The me-thod’s positive side effect: “The smooth fair-faced concrete is completely homogeneous and has neither anchor holes nor any traces of formwork. It actually looks like a textile surface and enjoys a quality of concrete finish that is rarely found in industrial buildings,” explains the architect and ATP Lead Project Manager Ingo Koller.
 
Project information:

Client: Kampffmeyer Mühlen GmbH (today: GoodMills Group GmbH)
Location: Krefeld, DE
Construction start: 06/2018
Completion: 02/2021
Gross floor area: 23,000 m2
Gross built volume: 217,000 m3