KENYA – German human nutrition company and food ingredients supplier, BASF has opened a Customer Experience Centre in Nairobi, Kenya to provide tailor-made support for formulation and application of food solutions.
The center offers an open space architectural design that fosters closer collaboration and nurtures cross industry pollination, allowing BASF and its customers to develop tailor-made solutions.
BASF said that the Customer Experience Centre, strategically located in the capital of East Africa’s most vibrant economy, will service the East Africa market providing customers with formulations and applications that blend with local functionalized solutions adapted for local taste, texture and products.
“We know that food is closely linked to culture – and that culture is local. With our concept, we are able to stay in close contact with our customers and thus meet their specific needs,” said Diana Wairimu, Account Manager, Human Nutrition.
“Furthermore, we can proactively work on new food concepts to show our customers how their future products could potentially look like.
“Another benefit is that we proactively work-out food concepts in order to demonstrate to our customer how we would act if we would be in the position of our customer.”
The food performance ingredients manufacturer said that its experts will support and work together with customers to develop applications for the specific needs and trends in the food industry such as in the development of cake, muffins, creams and desserts as well
The company noted that facility is open to offer support to all customers in East Africa and will further enable the company to work collaboratively with distributors and other partners, including universities.
The Nairobi Customer Experience Centre joins a global network of application centres that BASF operates in various continents. Including the Kenyan centre, the company has a total of 8 application centres worldwide.
Commenting on the opening of the facility, which is BASF’s first in Africa, Shollay Ramlaul Head of Sales & Business Development said; “After opening our Customer Experience Centre in Istanbul 5 years ago, we saw the immediate effect of customer collaboration. And our customers benefit from this additional service.
“Our partners in Moscow or Lebanon also invested in a Customer Experience Centre and confirmed the improved situation. Our experience is that our customers highly appreciate our approach. At the end we discuss food where everybody is an end-consumer.”
BASF has also opened application centres in Jacarei, Brazil; Tarrytown, USA; Dallerup, Denmark; Istanbul, Turkey; Shanghai, China; Singapore and Germany.
While the facility in Kenya is a micro Customer Experience Centre, BASF has unveiled plans of developing it over the years into a world class Kitchen Laboratory.
