KENYA – AIT Ingredients, a division of The Soufflet Group – a French agri-food company, has commenced operations at its newly established East African unit in Nairobi, Kenya.

AIT Ingredients operates along the wheat-flour-bread chain, producing technical solutions i.e., improvers, correctors, enzymes and aromatic solutions such as sourdoughs, roasted malts, cereal blends for the milling and baking industries.

The company has its main R&D center located in the south of Paris with its other operations spread across Europe, South America, Middle East, Asia and Africa.

The newly established AIT Ingredients East Africa joins the other two subsidiaries in the region.

“Being the first local ingredients supplier with fully operational laboratory, means closer to our customer’s to giving them timely response and the best services.”

Marvin Jaeger, Director – AIT Ingredients East Africa

It is aimed to provide full support to local millers by conducting flour analytics (Rheology), ingredient/Improver formulations tailored to the mill process and finished product, and baking trainings.

“In the past months we have planned, curated, and executed the growth of AIT Ingredients throughout East Africa.

“Being the first local ingredients supplier with fully operational laboratory, means closer to our customer’s to giving them timely response and the best services,” Marvin Jaeger, Director – AIT Ingredients East Africa

The opening of the new facility comes months after Soufflet Group through its malting division, Malteries Soufflet, officially launched its new processing factory in Ethiopia.

Construction of the plant started in March 2019, with its first production test undertaken in the beginning of the year, and is now in continuous production.

The IFC, a subsidiary of the World Bank, was the financial partner in the industrial project and continues to support the group in the development of barley cultivation via the NGO EUCORD (European Cooperative for Rural Development).

The new Addis Ababa processing facility is the group’s 28th malt house globally and the first in Africa.

This ambitious project is fully in line with Malteries Soufflet’s strategy to develop activities outside Europe, which already include Brazil, Argentina and India.

Located on 10 hectares in the suburb of Addis Ababa, Soufflet Malt Ethiopia enjoys a strategic location, close to barley crops.

Equipped with state-of-the-art infrastructure, the malt house aims to produce 60,000 tonnes in the first year and ultimately hopes to achieve a production capacity of 110,000 tonnes per year.

With this establishment, the Soufflet Group is committed to an import substitution project across the entire value chain as the barley used is grown locally and the malt is sold directly to local brewers.

This will significantly reduce imports, which currently represent 70% of the market.

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