CUSTOMERS TO BENEFIT FROM NEW HI-TECH AFOODABLE MANUFACTURING FACILITY
Afoodable, a division of Lake Foods, has officially opened its new plant in the Food Production industrial area of Montague Gardens, Cape Town. This state-of-the art facility introduces innovative liquid product concepts that will enhance Afoodable’s ability to tailor-make solutions for its customers in the sauces and marinade sectors.
“Our strength lies in our ability to service local and export markets with a diverse range of quality liquid marinades and sauces,” says Tracey Davies, Managing Director of Lake Foods. “Our new plant boosts our capacity to 1 000 tonnes a month and will enable us to offer our customers even better products and services, in partnership with them.”
Afoodable’s extensive range of branded products are supplied to the catering and food manufacturing markets. The business also manufactures and co-packs for larger South African companies, including certain retail outlets. The ranges include 290 product lines, mainly in marinades and sauces but also in base products, salad dressings and milkshake syrups. Manufacturing processors are cold mix and high shear, semi-cooked and fully cooked.
“Our facilities and technical know-how make it possible to customise specialty products for customers. We remove the complexities of self-manufacturing, thereby allowing marketers the freedom to focus on managing their brands in the market place,” adds Tracey.
The five retail packing lines have filling speeds that range from 22 bottles per minute on a piston filler to 42 bottles per minutes on the 250ml bottle line. The facility is flexible enough to allow the use of containers that include glass and PET, with the ability to cold or hot fill, and volumes from 125ml right through to 750ml and doypacks. For the foodservice and food manufacturing markets, packaging options are 2 litres, 5 litres, 25 litre buckets, 20 litre Bag in Box and 1 tonne disposable and reusable Flexitainers.
Afoodable’s team sources packaging, perfects recipes and controls the quality of finished products.
“Although our food technologists oversee quality, this and food safety are paramount in our industry so excellence in this regard is an integral component of each employee’s responsibilities” elaborates Craig Allen, General Manager at Afoodable. “We first implemented the SABS-audited HACCP system in 2006 and the objective is to implement FSSC 22000 by the middle of 2016.”
In addition to Afoodable, Lake Foods has three other divisions: Cobito (which supplies blended and functional food additives to the poultry and meat sectors), Infigro (producing insulation, filtration and plant growth aids from the mineral perlite) and FoodSolutions. The latter’s product and service offering includes bacterial cultures, specialized phosphates and functional ingredients for the dairy and food industry. This division has moved its Cape Town business to the new Montague Gardens site, in support of business growth in the specialised additives market.
Lake Foods is a division of JSE-listed AECI, which has identified the Food Additives and Ingredients industry as a strategic growth area. Speaking at the opening of Afoodable’s facility Mark Dytor, Chief Executive of AECI said: “Lake Foods is primarily focused on the South African market at present, although it has representation in some other African countries. Above-average economic growth in many markets on the continent offers great opportunities for us and we intend taking advantage of these.
“We are already African leaders in the Mining Solutions and Water Solutions industries, and our footprint in Agrochemicals is also expanding. Our strategy for the Food Additives and Ingredients sector is to leverage this established position going forward. Lake Foods will continue to lead AECI’s efforts in this regard”.
