The last day of the Exchange week had arrived and on Wednesday the 10th of April we had breakfast all together and then took the bus to Loulis mills. Loulis mills is a huge, high tech mill in the region, 1300 tons of wheat come in every day. It has its own port, 5 roller mills and one stone mill and is 100 000 m² (including the port). The plant manager Leonidas Kozanitis welcomed us and whilst the bakers were quality checking aka baking bread we got a nice presentation on the mill and got to ask a lot of questions, which were all answered truthfully.
The mill has existed since 1782 and was renewed in 2012, it’s one of the most modern and automated mills. Their flowers range from traditional ones, to ones with specific additives, to ready to bake packages, they have around 120 different flours. It’s the number one flour mill in the Balkans with yearly 210 000 tons of flour produced. Since Greece is not self sufficient in wheat they also import a lot of it, they check the quality there and when it arrives here. They monitor all stages of the production and invests loads in research and innovation. This means that they have technicians, scientists, bakers, salesmen etc working for them. They check the moisture, humidity, hectolitre weight, protein content, enzymes, viscosity,…
The company exports to Bulgaria, Russia, Albania, Emirates, Egypt, Germany, USA, Lebanon in shipping containers from their own port in Volos or Pireos. Through giving workshops and organising the Greek baking school they keep bakers all around Greece up to date with everything. When asked about environmental impacts he told us that they don’t use that much water since the cleaning process is dry. With sieves, filters and magnets they clean. The by products are used to make animal feed. The maintenance of machines and packaging materials stuff are given to a specialised company for recycling. They do use a lot of energy there and continuously try to lessen that. More than 15 millions of kWh per year are used here, this is about 2 million euros of electricity. When asked about the most challenging aspects he told us the market and how it changes everyday, also how dependent they are from the weather, how the technology changes quickly as well as the laws in Greece and the EU.
After the tour of the factory we could eat bread and muffins and have some soda. We then said goodbye and got an amazing goodiebag, with a book on the history of the mill, a pack of flour, a pack of baking mix for pancakes or brownies and a pack of glazing sugar. We left for lunch and then went to the Entemological museum of Athanasios Koutroumpas. This means we got to see the biggest private collection of bugs and insects in Greece. Over 100 000 species are located here and the reason it’s not more is because they don’t have anymore space. More than 95% of these insects were caught by the owners father, the other 3 to 4% by his sister and the last percent from donations.
Insects are arthropods, so they have 6 legs and they are the most evolved species on the planet. They’ve existed for 450 million years and have great capabilities. They can sometimes reproduce crazily, like the queen bee for example, she can lay 2500 eggs per day. Or they smell very well. The clothes moths can smell sex hormones from 11 km away and then try to find the female to mate. Their hard exoskeleton makes them very durable against environmental conditions (just think about cockroaches). They can be very strong, like the ants who lift 1500 times its own weight, or the fleas who jump 50 times their own height.
Now, entomology? Where does the name come from? Well, Aristoteles had called insects entomo, so add the logy and you got it.
Did you know that less than 10 species of insects are directly producing stuff for us? Bees have honey, silk caterpillars create silk etc but many more insects are indirectly useful to us. Ladybugs for example can eat the plant lice so our crops survive.
Another one of the insects great capabilities is mimicry, copying something or someone. Why would you copy something? Here’s an example: owls eat the enemies of butterflies, so if a butterfly looks like an owl, the enemies will think it’s a real one and run away. Also, if your predators cannot see you, how can they eat you? That’s why stick insects exist or the ones who disappear into leaves or trees.
The biggest butterfly in the world btw has a wingspan of 40 cm. The biggest insect however is a stick insect with a stretched out body of 55 cm (with feet).
Another tactic to survival is living short term but producing massively. One of the butterflies here only lives for 12 days but produces 5 times more children than the others.
What is sex dismorfism? It’s when one of the sexes in the species looks entirely different than the other. The males are very different than the females. Why? To distract the predators so the females can survive and give offspring. This doesn’t only happen in insects though, think about chickens and roosters, lions, horned animals (deer), peacocks, elephants,… How do butterflies get their iridescence? Through scales, they act like prisms and make the lepidopthera butterfly shine. How do they get transparent wings? No scales! There are species who imitate bees and wasps as well, since they are quite dangerous in a group, predators are scared of them.
Other cool butterflies are these ones: they live in the rain forest and look very different on either side. One flashy colourful side to attract others and find each other, the brown side to hide in dark spots.
Beetles now, they have horns, to fight for the females. The biggest beetle in the world is the titanos gigantus. They can even fly and are the most populated taxa and most evolved one. However, they’re not dangerous to us.
The final visit was over and all that was left to do was having one more night all together, eat delicious Greek food, drink the delicious Greek wine and have fun! Which is exactly what we did.
On Thursday the 11th of April departure day, some of us left in the evening from Thessaloniki so they took the bus early and checked out the city. The others (Ukraine, Germany and me) had a nice beach day and checked out the stones. We saw some cool animals but also lots of trash, so an impromptu beach clean up started. Look at all we collected, just 20 minutes, 3 people, and the fear of me falling of the stones.
One of the days after the exchange week me and my friend Panagiotis went hiking. The view was amazing so I wanted to include those pictures too.
Again, thank you to everyone for making this an amazing week, thank you to the sponsors and the organiser, and thank you to Gyros and Souvlaki!
