Pilot Malting Australia (PMA) is located at the Edith Cowan University (ECU) Joondalup campus in Perth. Grains Australia contracts the services of PMA for Stage 1 of the accreditation process and as part of the post-accreditation support work aimed at providing publicly available data on new variety performance.
With a batch capacity of 100 kilograms, the pilot plant at PMA provides access to malting data, comparable to that of commercial facilities, without having to malt commercial quantities of
barley. PMA is Australia’s first pilot malting facility and the only one of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere.
PMA Operations Manager and Pilot Maltster – Jon Luff
Jon has been involved with Pilot Malting Australia (PMA) at Edith Cowan University (ECU) since early 2012 when he was seconded to commission the pilot malting plant and run trial malt batches. Subsequently, Jon was appointed as Operations Manager of PMA in September 2013.
From 2013 to 2018 Jon played a significant role in two major research projects funded by the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) and the Australian Export Grains Innovation Centre (AEGIC). These projects helped to establish pilot malting procedures in Australia which led to the acceptance of pilot malting as suitable for Stage 1 of Barley Australia’s malting barley accreditation system in 2018.
The PMA facility a ECU is the only one of its kind in Australia and as such Jon’s technical knowledge and
experience of pilot malting is unique.