“Being in South Africa is a logical step for us,” said Hidde van der Wal, Barentz CEO, noting there would be an annex in Cape Town.
“With 55 million people, South Africa is a substantial market for the food industry. South Africa has seen a rise in the income of the middle class, giving way to the growth of large food retail stores like Shoprite Checkers, Pick ’n Pay, Woolworths and Spar. To supply these retail stores with food and beverage products, many leading global and local companies have established factories in Sub-Saharan Africa, needing high quality ingredients to produce their world class products.”
Clear interest in specialty ingredients…
Paul Vet, MD of Barentz South Africa noted a rise in interest in healthy foods and, “a clear interest in specialty ingredients to produce for instance gluten free and organic products.”
“More and more high technology food processing plants are built, with Nigeria topping the scale. With this comes the need for more technical support and for a super-efficient logistics system, which many trading companies are not able to supply.”
The company has been active internationally forming a partnership with an Oceania player Additive Solutions this year and establishing a Malaysian office in Kuala Lumpur in 2013.
It has also been busy with acquisitions buying UK life sciences firm Forum Products Ltd at the end of 2011, taking a majority share in Rewe Group-owned Rewe Food Ingredients (RFI) in Germany the same year and paying an undisclosed sum for Italian ingredients start-up Prochifar in 2012.
The Barentz Group had a turnover of €880 million Euros in 2013.