Complete 15 TPD rice milling line installed at domestic facility
This customer story documents the installation and commissioning of a complete 15-tonne-per-day rice milling production line at a domestic buyer's facility in China. The line — supplied and commissioned by Starlight Machinery — covers the full processing sequence from paddy intake through husking, separation, whitening, polishing, colour sorting, and automatic electronic weighing and bagging. Five on-site installation photographs document the line as commissioned and ready for production.
Five photographs. One complete production line. This is what a 15-tonne-per-day rice milling installation looks like on the floor of a real facility in China, not on a factory demonstration floor with the machines arranged for the camera.
The line covers every stage from paddy intake to packaged product: pre-cleaning, destoning, husking, paddy-brown separation, whitening, polishing, colour sorting, and automatic electronic packing. All stages were commissioned by Starlight's installation team and verified with live paddy before the buyer began commercial production.
For buyers evaluating a complete production line at the 15 TPD range, this is a more useful reference than a specification sheet. The photos show the machine arrangement in a working warehouse, the floor footprint, the ceiling clearance, and how the downstream output-handling equipment fits alongside the core milling sequence.
The buyer's requirement
The buyer ran a rice purchasing and processing business in China, sourcing paddy from local growers and selling milled white rice to wholesale and institutional buyers. Their existing equipment had been adequate when the business was smaller. By the time they contacted Starlight, paddy supply and sales volume had both grown past what the current line could handle in a single shift.
The requirement was a complete production line capable of producing white rice to wholesale market specifications at 15 TPD. Two specific additions were non-negotiable: a colour sorter and automatic bagging. Without those, the output still needs a downstream quality step before it can be packed and sold. With them, the line produces packaged products directly, and the buyer can palletise and dispatch from the same floor.
The facility was an existing steel-frame warehouse with a concrete floor, natural roof lighting, and three-phase power already in place. No structural changes were needed.
Equipment supplied
The line runs the entire processing sequence in a single, continuous flow.
Paddy enters a vibrating screen cleaner and gravity destoner, which strip straw, dust, soil particles, and stones before the paddy reaches the husker. Pre-cleaning at this stage protects the downstream wear components and keeps impurities out of the final product.
From pre-cleaning, the paddy goes to rubber-roller huskers sized for a 15 TPD throughput. A gravity-type paddy separator follows, returning any unprocessed paddy back to the husking stage so that only fully dehusked brown rice continues forward. Getting this separation right controls the broken rice rate further down the line.
Two whitening passes follow, with water-mist polishing after each. Running whitening in two stages rather than one means less pressure per pass, reducing breakage and extending roll life. The polished rice then passes through an optical colour sorter, which removes discoloured, immature, and damaged grains. For wholesale buyers, colour-sorted output is the standard they specify. Without a colour sorter, you are selling bulk white rice. With one, you are selling a graded product.
The final stage is an automatic electronic quantitative packing scale (电子定量秤) with conveyor discharge. Bags fill and seal to a set weight without manual intervention at each cycle. The line ends with a packaged product on a conveyor belt, ready to be palletised.
Bucket elevators and auger conveyors handle material transfer between stages throughout. A dust collection system captures bran and fine dust from the whitening stage for separate recovery as by-products.
What the installation photographs show
Photos 1 and 3 show the core milling section from the husking stage through whitening and polishing. The machines are finished in Starlight's white and dark blue. Belt drives connecting the processing stages to their motors are visible and accessible without removing panels, which matters during routine tensioning checks. The blue-panelled whitening and polishing units in the foreground have large-dial control panels clearly labelled so the operator can read and adjust settings while standing in front of the machine.
Photo 2 takes in the full line width, from the milling section on the right through to the colour sorting and packing section on the left. The colour sorter sits in the centre, positioned to take white rice from the polishing stage and pass sorted rice to the packing station. The electronic packing scale is visible at the far left, with its weighing hoppers and bag-discharge conveyor in position.
Photo 4 shows the packing end in detail. The automatic packing station, the green-framed unit with the conveyor discharge belt in the foreground, is where the processed rice exits as a finished product. The 电子定量秤 on the left controls the fill-weight accuracy for each bag cycle.
Photo 5 is a side view with the dust collection system in the background: the fabric-filter bag and pipework that captures bran and fine dust from the whitening stage. The colour sorter and its compressed-air supply tank are visible on the right side of the frame.
Commissioning and line performance
Starlight's installation and commissioning team handled the on-site work. The commissioning sequence covered mechanical alignment and drive tensioning first, then a live paddy run through the full line to verify throughput rate, milling recovery, and broken rice percentage. The whitening roll gap and the polishing water application were adjusted during the live run to meet the buyer's output quality target.
Colour sorter calibration is grain-variety specific. The rejection threshold that works for one paddy source and grade may need to be adjusted when the supply or target grade changes, so the team set the initial calibration for the buyer's standard paddy and documented the adjustment procedure.
The packing scale was verified against a sample run of filled bags and adjusted to meet the buyer's bag weight tolerance.
The buyer's operator team was trained on the start-up sequence, normal operating monitoring, calibration adjustments, and planned maintenance: roll inspection intervals, screen replacement schedule, and lubrication points.
Who this line is suitable for
Domestic rice processors in China at the 15 TPD range who need to step up from a basic combined mill to a complete line with colour sorting and packaged output. The gap between a combined mill producing bulk white rice and wholesale-specification packaged product is not a minor one. A colour sorter and automatic packing station are what close it.
Buyers planning a new installation at 15 TPD who want to see a real commissioned line before committing. The photographs here show the complete installation in a working warehouse: floor space, ceiling clearance, machine layout, and how everything fits together. That is more useful than a factory demo.
Agricultural cooperatives and smaller processors who have grown past basic milling capacity and want to add colour sorting and packing in a single project rather than piecemeal over time.
Buyers evaluating the ZNJ-15 Combined Rice Mill who want to understand how a 15 TPD combined mill fits into a complete production line alongside a colour sorter and auto packer.
For higher throughput, the ZNJ-25 Combined Rice Mill and 30-Unit Combination Rice Mill scale the same sequence to 20 to 30 TPD. Above 30 TPD, Starlight's Custom Rice Milling Lines from 30 to 200 TPD cover fully engineered configurations matched to the buyer's throughput, grain profile, and facility.
Frequently asked questions
What does a complete 15 TPD rice milling production line include, and how does it differ from a combined rice mill?
A combined rice mill integrates husking, separation, whitening, and polishing into a single compact unit. A complete production line runs each of those functions as separate, individually adjustable machines, connected by conveyors and elevators, and adds the stages a combined mill does not include: pre-cleaning, destoning, colour sorting, and packing. Each machine in a production line can be adjusted, maintained, or upgraded without affecting the others. For buyers selling to wholesale or retail buyers who require a graded, packaged product, the production line is the configuration that gets the rice from the husker to the pallet without a manual intermediate step.
What floor space does a complete 15 TPD rice milling line require?
A 15 TPD line with a colour sorter and an automatic packing station typically requires a footprint of roughly 15 to 25 metres in length and 5 to 8 metres in width, depending on the configuration and the space available for material handling and operator access. A ceiling height of at least 5 metres is needed for installations with bucket elevators. The photographs in this post show the line installed in a standard steel-frame warehouse, which gives a practical floor-level reference for buyers assessing their available space. Starlight's team can produce a layout drawing for a specific facility as part of project scoping.
How long does commissioning take for a complete 15 TPD production line?
With the facility infrastructure already in place (power, concrete floor, building), installation and commissioning of a line to this specification typically take around 5 to 7 days from the equipment's arrival on site. That covers mechanical installation, electrical connection, calibration with live paddy, colour sorter sensitivity setting, packing scale verification, and operator training. Projects with non-standard power supply conditions or significant operator training requirements may take longer. Starlight confirms the commissioning timeline in the project agreement before equipment is dispatched.
Can the colour sorter and automatic packing station be added to an existing Starlight milling line?
Yes. Both can be retrofitted into an upstream milling sequence that is already running. The retrofit requires confirming the output flow rate and physical dimensions of the existing line's polished rice discharge to properly size the sorter and packing station. Contact Starlight via the Contact page with details of your current line to request a retrofit assessment.
What are the maintenance requirements for a complete production line compared to a combined rice mill?
A production line has more individual components than a combined mill, but each machine's maintenance tasks are straightforward and can be carried out independently. The main planned tasks are inspection and replacement of whitening rolls; inspection and replacement of screens at the pre-cleaning and separation stages; bearing and belt checks at scheduled intervals; and daily colour sorter lens cleaning in dusty milling environments. Because each machine is independently accessible, one stage can be serviced without stopping the full line. Starlight supplies a commissioning manual and planned maintenance schedule with every production line installation, and spare parts packages for key wear components are available at the time of equipment order.
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