Celebrate all the good that happened in 2020

Celebrate all the good that happened in 2020

Last year may go down as the worst business year for many companies and many in the food and beverage industry suffered greatly. For Synercore’s technical and sales company, African Food Industries (AFI), 2020 was fortunately a very positive and rewarding year.

It is often said that ‘out of chaos comes opportunity’. This proved true for AFI. “The Synercore and AFI team along with their research and development company, Innovative Research Solutions, decided to look at all of the negatives of 2020 and to consider which opportunities could arise from them. Be it lessons learnt, or experience gained, we saw all of this as a positive contribution to how we could work in the future,” explains a spokesperson for the Synercore bakery team.

Some notable positive outcomes in 2020 were:

• Validation of the policy to hold four to six weeks’ worth of stock. Many suppliers ran out of material due to closed supply from their suppliers during the early part of COVID-19 lockdown. AFI was able to keep 100% of customers supplied, and continued to gain new business.

• AFI received customer recognition for successfully navigating COVID-19 and also gained a New Top Supplier award.

• Validation of effort to maintain compliance systems like FSSC22000. Neither sites in Cape Town nor Johannesburg were affected by COVID-19. Procedures to separate processes in production and even in staff transport proved successful.

• The travel restrictions allowed for more time to develop products and technologies in the bakery department. Finalised customer projects in 2020 with regards to new formulations and processes were:

- Cake and bread donuts

- Burger buns

- Muffins and flapjacks

- Yeast reduction technology

• Validation of retaining the highest skilled bakery technology team in South Africa. With customers running out of ingredients due to COVID-19, the AFI team of five highly qualified bakers with a combined 140 years’ experience, was put to the test, and passed 100%.

• Use of heat profilers in ovens and internally when baking products, initiated a new quality assurance procedure called “Kill Step”. With COVID-19 flourishing, AFI were able to develop this procedure to assess the kill of micro loads (SARS-CoV*) in cereal flours, as well as soya, lentil and malt flours. * (nucleocapsid protein of SARS-CoV is completely denatured in 10 min at 55°C) – Journal of Hospital Infection

“A new texture analyser will aid the assessment of new enzyme and emulsifier technologies whilst the new ultra-high performance liquid chromatography system at IRS, with diode ray detectors, will assist in amino acid determination in flour”

This year looks to be a great one with more on offer from AFI. The new, recently completed test baking facility is 300% larger than before, allowing space for the training of customers. A new texture analyser will aid the assessment of new enzyme and emulsifier technologies whilst the new ultra-high performance liquid chromatography system at IRS, with diode ray detectors, will assist in amino acid determination in flour.

AFI is a producer of baking and milling ingredients like:

Enzyme Blends

• Flour Correctors

• Bread Concentrates

• Bun & Roll Concentrates

• Tortilla, wraps & flat bread concentrates

Premix

• Sponge

• Sweet bun pastes

• Scone

• Baking powder

• Flour

• Pizza

• Bread

Emulsifier Blends

• Bread softener

• Bread strengthener

• Speciality bread shelf life extender

Improvers

• Buns & rolls

• Ciabatta

• Sandwich bread

The new texture analyser will aid the assessment of new enzyme and emulsifier technologies

Whatever the challenge your bakery may have, AFI’s technical and product development team, in conjunction with its IRS research teams are ready to assist. BR

Synercore – https://synercore.co.za/afi/