NAMIBIA – Namib Mills, the largest grain processing company in Namibia has launched a new culinary concept space dubbed Kitchen 82.

Kitchen 82 is a professional environment where the public can be trained and educated about baking and cooking techniques to expand their culinary skills.

According to reports by Namibian Sun, the platform is aimed to offer interactive dining experiences and cooking classes for foodies of all ages and skill levels.

“As our tagline ‘for the love of food’ states, we want to give the public a space in which they can learn, socialize and even use to prep for catering engagements, or food-related content production.”

Innovation centre manager – Karen Kirsten

Celebrating nearly 40 years of feeding and nourishing families in the Southern Africa country, Namib Mills will offer a wide range of courses including cooking classes, baking classes, team building, kids baking and birthday parties and venue hiring.

“As our tagline ‘for the love of food’ states, we want to give the public a space in which they can learn, socialise and even use to prep for catering engagements, or food-related content production, because our aim is really to empower everyone — from kids, home cooks to small- and medium-sized enterprises [SMEs] and beyond,” said Innovation centre manager Karen Kirsten.

The new platform rides on the success of its Bakpro Vetkoek training, which is still on going, and the recently launched RealGood Kapana training initiatives, that seek to uplift the livelihoods of bakers, braaiers and food service SMEs by enhancing their skills

“Kitchen 82 will be nothing less than that, to give you the necessary skills to become an entrepreneur in your own right, and in return create a better livelihood for yourself, generate an income and become a culinary professional yourself.

“With Kitchen 82 we’ve expanded our already existing involvement with SME development and upliftment, and we’re honoured to now add the beautiful Kitchen 82 to our base,” Namib Mills said.

This sophisticated and fully equipped culinary concept space is located at Namib Mills’ head office in Windhoek.

The miller, officially inaugurated it new state-of-the-art bakery plant worth N$134.6m (US$9.2m), in March last year.

The plant has enabled the company to expand its market share with the launch of a new brand of bread known as Bakpro Superior Loaves.

Referred to as a travelling plant, the factory employs world class-technology and it is fully-automated, running the entire process of mixing, fermenting, baking and packaging.

Despite the baking process being fully automated and sterile, requiring no human contact, the new venture has created 120 new jobs along the entire production line.

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