Lesaffre Inaugurates the Baking Center in Côte d’Ivoire
Lesaffre inaugurated the Baking Center of its subsidiary Lesaffre Ivoire in Abidjan – the first of its kind in West Africa – aiming to support customers in this region in the development of their expertise and new innovative bread-making solutions.
Lesaffre Ivoire thus completes its expertise and facilities in order to support a diversified clientele: craft bakers, industrialists, distributors, wholesalers, hotels, and restaurants.
The new Baking Center, built on a surface area of more than 120sqm, will bring together a team of breadmaking specialists who will be able to help professionals in the development of new products or breadmaking processes, train them using on-site equipment or intervene directly in their customers’ workshops and production sites to provide technical support.
Romain Petit, managing director of Lesaffre Ivoire said: “Our customers appreciate being able to challenge their bread-making process on state-of-the-art equipment and with the help of experts. It’s a collaborative, peer-to-peer process, and our entire team is mobilized to come up with new ideas. For some customers, it’s an opportunity to learn or relearn how to master the ingredients to diversify their offer or improve the quality of their products.”
Lesaffre Ivoire’s experts and technicians are familiar with the specificities of West Africa and provide concrete solutions for using yeast, sourdough or bread improvers in local recipes such as Ghanaian bread, traditional baguette, farmhouse bread or compound bread (wheat-manioc).
“We have always wanted to be as close as possible to our customers, and Africa is an important market for Lesaffre. We are proud to inaugurate this new Baking Center which will enable us to go further in our support in West Africa. Bread is not consumed in the same way in France, the Ivory Coast or Algeria. Local experts can respond to local requirements and share their knowledge with research and development here. This enables them to co-develop products that meet these requirements. It’s a virtuous circle that starts in Baking Center™ where professionals speak the same language,“ added David Jousselme, director of the overseas region of Lesaffre.