Quality, reliability, transparency, safety and benefits for our customers with every grain – that's what IREKS stands for! Join us on a journey along our value-added chain from grain to finished piece of baked goods and find out what we do to have as much as possible under our own control.
Grain is our most important basic raw material. That is why we leave nothing to chance when it comes to cultivation and processing. Via our own agricultural trade, we are involved in the value-added chain from the very beginning. In this way, we influence the quality of our baking ingredients and malts for brewing long before the complex manufacturing processes begin in our production plants. This allows us to take up individual customer wishes or trends. We rely on the long-standing cooperation with our regional contract farmers from northern Bavaria and Thuringia and operate numerous local receiving points.
IREKS is a company that has been processing grain for more than 160 years and has built up a wealth of experience. It is our goal to constantly expand our grain expertise and to always be technically up to date. To ensure complete safety from field to finished product, IREKS invests in its own grain processing facilities. This enables us to avoid grain contamination, ensure perfect quality processing and adjust the properties of the grain raw materials to optimum baking characteristics for the subsequent products.
To be able to offer our customers a diverse range of products leaving room for individuality and creativity, we refine grain products and other raw materials in a variety of ways. In doing so, IREKS relies on modern production technology and decades of experience in the manufacture of malt and sourdough products, which can be used independently or as ingredients for our mixes and improvers.
Malting has been one of IREKS' core competences for more than 160 years. We apply this in-depth know-how to the production of malt products for baking. In addition to the classic malting process, IREKS uses a wide variety of refining and processing methods to integrate malt in liquid, paste and dry form into baking ingredients. For particularly aromatic and dark malts, for example, we use roasting drums, other malts are saccharified and caramelised or brewed and dried. Thermal treatments also make it possible to produce enzyme-inactive malt products. As great the variety may be, they all have one thing in common: they are natural products that, with their different aroma and flavour profiles, facilitate the creation of unique, individual baked goods.
As unique aroma products, malt extracts require specially selected malted grain as a basis. In a multi-stage refinement process, we produce light and dark malt extracts in our state-of-the-art brewhouse by mashing, lautering and evaporating under constant control of all relevant parameters. These ultimately become part of our products or are used directly by our customers in a wide variety of baked goods. On the way to the finished product, we carry out some 20 steps, which include continuous checks and comprehensive quality tests. State-of-the-art technology ensures that absolutely nothing is left to chance and that our production is energy-saving and sustainable. By the way, in baked goods, malt extract primarily ensures a unique aroma and taste, which unfolds during baking and is particularly noticeable in the crust.
Based on our 100 years of experience, we offer a wide range of high-quality sourdough products. At IREKS, the production is carried out traditionally using the three-stage process. The use of controlled cultures from our own company and strict production monitoring prevent undesirable foreign fermentations or mis-fermentations. But we don’t just offer safety! Product diversity is also a central requirement for us when it comes to sourdoughs. In addition to proven varieties such as rye, wheat and spelt sourdoughs, we have durum, buckwheat and green spelt sourdoughs in our constantly growing portfolio. Under the umbrella brand MONDO LIEVITO MADRE, we also produce typical Italian Lievito Madre, whose natural ripening is controlled by experienced Lievitisti and which is gently dried afterwards.
Many of the raw materials we prepare and refine go into our diverse mixes and improvers. These are accompanied at every stage of production by analyses and baking tests and produced by means of a fully automated batch mixing system. The advantage: for each batch produced, it is possible to trace back exactly what raw materials were used and what production route it has taken. The raw material mix remains in the same container throughout the entire production process, so that the production areas touched by the product are kept to a minimum, and our permanent product compatibility tests prevent impurities and cross-contamination. This is an important prerequisite, especially for the safe manufacture of products with special characteristics such as gluten-free, kosher or halal.
Every step of the IREKS value-added chain is accompanied by the most precise analyses and quality controls – from the recommendation for cultivation to the superior finished product. We use our many years of experience and cooperation with educational institutions to constantly improve our comprehensive in-house analysis, which includes laboratory as well as baking and sensory tests. When it comes to development, we focus on grain-based, IREKS-own raw materials such as malts and sourdoughs in order to constantly expand our range. Our quality and innovation standards are based on the five pillars of the IREKS IQ concept: research, development, food law, quality assurance and quality management.