“Sheer determination and a series of fortunate events have brought us here” 

Madam Glawdis Yao and Monsieur Ngouan Beni Kouame met as young students in university in Abidjan, Cöte d’Ivoire. After some years of courting, the two got married and started their lives together. Glawdis found a job in administration, while Monsieur Beni, with his background in food safety, went on to work with agro-processor OLAM.  It was this background in food processing that gave him the idea to set up their own company: SITRAV.

Chili peppers are a mainstay of Ivorian cuisine, but the traditional process of grinding the pepper with a stone was not only tiresome, but inefficient. The mashed pepper would typically have stones and grains of sand in it. The couple decided to start making their own ready-to-use spices. SITRAV began with them milling pepper and spices in the local market and manually filling and bagging it in sachets. It was an intense, tasking process, that yielded only the equivalent of $8 after a full, fourteen-hour day of work. 

They needed a breakthrough. A chance publication in a pan-African magazine by a journalist who had purchased their product and loved it led to SITRAV receiving their first flurry of attention. In 2019, they were invited to take part in a competition for entrepreneurs which earned them their first tranche of funding to expand their processing. They participated in further contests which led to more visibility and more capital to invest in their business, allowing them to fully convert their home into a full-time production facility. Now they had the foundations in place. It was time to focus on the technical.  

This is where PFS came in, offering the expertise that helps small and medium business like SITRAV to scale. Since 2022, PFS has paired SITRAV with volunteers from its corporate partners on several business and technical projects, as well as mentorships for staff and management. PFS has also placed apprentices who have had a year-long immersion with the company. Two of them have been offered contracts after their stint. 

Some of the projects have included a plant layout and modification project that has left regulators and visitors impressed. Another project with a General Mills volunteer helped them understand their business model which laid out the need for them to buy surplus raw materials when prices are low to store for production throughout the year. The project also helped them deepen their understanding of their margins and profit. A Cargill volunteer also helped them on a shelf-life extension project, which led to fewer complaints from suppliers, allowed SITRAV to expand their distribution and gave them access to supply mainstream grocery stores. Additional projects include a Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) documentation project after which they have successfully passed 3 GMP audits. They are currently working on a Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) project in the hopes of attaining certification, which will allow them supply bigger companies and multinationals, resulting in a huge impact on their turnover. 

SITRAV’s client lead, Bühler’s Marc Zipperle, finds them a dedicated and willing client. "SITRAV is working very hard every day trying to expand their business, make a living, and follow their vision. They have an entrepreneurial spirit that creates value in the community, and it feels great to support and be part of it. SITRAV is dedicated – they literally tore down a wall in the production facility to optimize their production processes.” 

Marc says he also benefits from this volunteer experience. “I find the idea of how PFS works very cool. It is a great idea at its core and a pragmatic approach for scaling know-how access for smaller businesses. Also, the cultural exchange is great. I had no previous ties to Côte d’Ivoire and West Africa. Now I do, and having a frequent exchange is a great personal learning experience as well! The client lead role is a role where you can learn a lot from actual experts. You are part of different projects that require different skill sets. I am currently learning a lot about GMPs and HACCP in more detail.” 

Today, SITRAV has 20 full-time employees, and 15 temporary staff. In addition to their natural powdered pepper, they also sell other local spices.  

After a few safety incidents occurred at Fastizers Food and Confectionary Limited’s facility in Nigeria, PFS Program Manager Toju Ukubeyinje thought it a good opportunity to offer them an occupational health and safety (OHS) refresh.  

“Fastizers produces cookies, biscuits and other confectionaries beloved by the Nigerian populace. After a couple of accidents happened within the span of two weeks, I realized that Fastizers would benefit greatly from the expertise of an OHS professional who could guide them to identify the root causes and gaps and implement preventative measures across the production process,”  said Toju. Based on this, PFS recruited General Mills project and system engineer Javier Valganon on an ‘Ask-an-expert' (AAE) project to improve Fastizers OHS culture.  

As head of health, safety and environment at the General Mills’ San Adrián plant in Spain, Javier Valganon was a perfect fit for this AAE. Javier began volunteering with PFS to share his knowledge and experience with food processors in other parts of the world, he said. “I have always felt the desire to help to the extent of my abilities, especially when it concerns people's safety. In all the projects I have participated in, what I have always received in return has been more than I have been able to deliver, which makes it a truly enriching experience.” 

Javier tackled the project with a two-fold approach. His first focus was on the equipment – which within the parameters of OHS must be designed to be safe and have mechanisms to prevent harm to people. “Our immediate actions were to install the necessary devices on the equipment to avoid accidents during production,” he said. “The most interesting challenges we had to address on this project were those related to the availability of technology associated with costs, but these were satisfactorily resolved with the local team looking for alternatives, once we had established the bases for safe work. “ 

The second approach is instilling a strong safety and health culture in the company by increasing people's perception and awareness of risk. Javier considers this a more medium-to long-term approach, as his years of experience have demonstrated that this kind of cultural change takes place only after sustained, consistent effort over time.  However, the Fastizers team have been encouraged to continue to provide regular OHS training to all employees, tailored for specific job roles and risk levels. They have also been urged to maintain open lines of communication between management and employees regarding safety concerns, policy updates, and incident reporting and the use of visual reminders such as posters and safety boards to keep OHS guidelines top-of-mind. 

Working with Fastizers has given Javier a different perspective on how African processors strive to produce safe food despite the many logistical and financial hindrances they face. “Working with this wonderful team, I have come to the realization that thinking outside the box can lead to imaginative and simple solutions to common problems.” 

Toju could not agree more. “The combination of Javier’s expertise and Fastizers’ agility led us to unlock practical solutions that addressed the OHS challenges in ways we might never have anticipated. This is how PFS facilitates thinking creatively together to find solutions that make a real difference for clients." 

Ivorian cuisine covers a wide range of tubers, grains, fish and vegetables, typically garnished with a range of local spices. In many households, these spices are ground by hand, making their daily use tiring and inconvenient. In 2016, Mrs. Yao Glawdis decided to change the status quo, by establishing SITRAV, a processing company that made affordable, ready-to-use spices. Eight years on, SITRAV has grown to become one of the leading producers of local spices in Côte d’Ivoire. To meet growing demand, SITRAV has had to expand their current production facility to new premises nearby. They looked to PFS for support on how best they could optimize their space while observing good hygiene practices. 

Kevin Richter, an engineering manager at Ardent Mills joined this project to support SITRAV. In his daily job, Kevin helps manage capital projects throughout the company. The range of experience he has garnered has been very useful to PFS as one of our committed and long-standing volunteers. He has nearly twenty successful projects under his belt, since he started volunteering in 2013. “Volunteering is a good way to give back, whether it is in the local community or like in my case, all these places that I may never even travel to. It’s also important to me because the clients (at PFS) always have a thirst for knowledge, curiosity and an improvement mindset which makes it easier to work with them.” 

Together with another volunteer from Bühler, Kevin reviewed SITRAV’s production process and came up with a plant layout design that prioritized food safety and put the requisite documentation in place. “The project was really about upping the food safety culture and trying to set the basic standards for what a United States (U.S) audit would require for walking zones for employees and ensure that dirty products are not mixed with clean products after processing,” said Kevin. 

SITRAV modified their plant’s layout based on the volunteers’ recommendations, setting the fundamentals for the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) certification they are aiming for. Kevin has signed up for another project with SITRAV to help resolve aspiration problems in their spice grinding room. He is working with them to develop a filtration system that will reduce how much spice blows back into the room to eliminate most of the dust.  

Mr. Beni Ngouan, operations director for SITRAV expressed his gratitude to Kevin and his team, saying, “Thanks to the volunteers, we achieved our objective. It was quite tough to have to pull down a portion of the walls and tiles but in the end, we are very happy to see the transformation of our building; the space is well organized and chic!”   

“Volunteering with PFS is always a good experience and I’m always happy to help. Don’t be afraid to start volunteering! The PFS teams are very patient, and the clients face the same problems that we do in the U.S – just on a different scale. Volunteering allows you to step back from the lens of large-scale manufacturing and focus on a small-scale issue which could be of a different raw material (like spices or cocoa beans) than you are used to. This shouldn’t scare you, because whether you know it or not, you have learned a lot from our culture at Ardent Mills, which you can hopefully impart to others,” said Kevin. 

Zach McGovern and Ray Mielke, two young financial analysts from General Mills in Minnesota, embarked on their first volunteer project with PFS this year. Under the guidance of volunteer Steve Berger, a retired General Mills employee and seasoned PFS volunteer, they set out to review and update the financial management systems of Lizhbrand Multicare Ltd, a maize milling company in Kenya. 

Lizhbrand’s operations had expanded since the business opened in 2017 and their financial management system was no longer sufficient for the company’s growing needs.  Understanding the need for a more robust system, Zach and Ray began by reviewing Lizhbrand’s existing financial management processes. They collaborated closely with CEO Lydia Mirugu, to establish a comprehensive financial process flow. This structured approach helped the team identify the various accounting units that required attention and management.  

Zach and Ray meticulously analyzed Lizhbrand’s production processes and associated financial records, breaking down each step to better understand how financial data was generated and recorded. This not only highlighted the inefficiencies in the current system but also helped them identify suitable accounting systems to replace it. The duo evaluated two potential software solutions: Odoo.com and Manager.io. They presented their findings to Lizhbrand, highlighting the capabilities of each system. After careful consideration, Odoo.com emerged as the preferred choice due to its capabilities and potential to scale. 

Zach and Ray went the extra mile by contacting several potential service providers for the company. The Lizhbrand team followed up with the service providers for demonstrations and quotations, eventually narrowing down to two options.  They eventually decided to contract with Odoo Africa as they were more responsive and offered competitive pricing.  

PFS is immensely grateful to Zach, Ray and Steve for willingly offering their expertise, which has enabled Madam Mirugu to make a well-informed decision that will help Lizhbrand continue to build sustainable business growth.