11 Sep 2025 SAAFoST Congress 2025 – Take #1
SAAFoST Congress 2025…. well, it was a superb three days! Your editor simply loved it… the friendly networking, reuniting with the old pals and meeting new ones, the steady uncovering of interesting stories, incredible innovations, awesome science, considered opinions, excellent organisation, an impressive expo, super catering … I think a worthwhile time was had by all who attended.
As one delegate, Josiah Muriuki, so aptly posted on LinkedIn: “Amazing is an understatement. The SAAFoST Congress is one of those places that appears to me like an onion, it occurs in layers, the more you peel the more you find out more interesting things.”
Here are two excellent short videos that encompass the spirit and feeling of the event…
Snaps from the expo – 42 companies!
Anchor Yeast showed off all its latest capabilities in sour dough and egg-free tech, and functional breads. Pictured here are Thuli Matlala, technical applications manager, and Lia Bothma, Pd manager.
Loved meeting the enthusiastic team from Sense PD, a dynamic food development consultancy based in Gauteng. Pictured here are: Mandy van Zyl, Roané Joubert, Kesia Schoeman, and Simone van Niekerk, co-director.
Industria-based Cereal & Malt was represented by Grant Carroll, sales & marketing manager, and Sharmaine Yagambarum, GM. Its malt ingredients are found in some of SA’s best-loved foods – think Chuckles!
IMCD enjoyed a prominent andy busy stand at the expo entrance, and apart from complimentary coffees, was offering some excellent sampling using principals’ ingredients: Here are Alrina Fourie, category manager; and Linda Segalla, business unit manager, with some tasty options: premium mayo, reduced oil mayo (25%), and a yummy Smokey BBQ sauce, among others.
Opposite IMCD was the Gamwave duo of Deon and Dale Gove, son and father team running a busy gamma sterilisation business, as majority owners of the NTP facility on the Pelindaba site, near Hartebeestpoort Dam. Nice to see them at a SAAFoST Expo for the first time. Food irradiation is a booming specialist sector globally – a vital tool in key sectors for safety and preservation.
Testo was displaying how easy it is to take the hassle out of HACCP and a multitude of food safety regimes – amazing measuring and monitoring tech! Here on its stand are Warren Vogel, key accounts manager, and colleague in the Jo’burg office, Leoni Hahn.
Graytec is a leading supplier of premium ingredients to the dairy, meat, confectionery, bakery, cosmetics, and nutraceutical industries. It also manufactures natural colourants and provides specialised cheese-cutting equipment..
Represented here by son and dad duo, Callum Gray, sales director, and Malcolm Gray, MD.
Enjoyed learning more about Cranbrook Flavours’ new range of reaction flavours that add cost-effective depth to savoury and sweet foods; as well as its new wash flavours for beverages. These are natural, clear, oil-based, soluble citrus flavours sans the turpenes or waxes. And there was more! A fried chicken build-up flavour, where flavour intensity builds with every bite of a savoury snack! .Snapped here are Cara Kruger and Ceanne Schultz.
Brenntag South Africa’s Gwen Matthysen, Janine van Wyk and David Kruger, snapped on a large and busy central expo spot.
Annelie Coetzee Consulting is a respected and well-established consultancy, offering quality and food safety management training, audits and consulting. Seen here are Anchon Hesse, Annelie and Sanders Coetzee.
Precision Oil Laboratories is a SANAS-accredited testing laboratory specialising in the analysis of the quality and composition of fats and oils. Based in Tzaneen, Bianca Elbrecht and Rejaen Botha loved telling me about their specialist work!
Ingrain’s Chatherine Chisindi, Lee Tsholo and Malani Govender – Ingrain is one of Africa’s largest producers of unmodified and modified starch, glucose, and other related products. Ingrain’s presence can be counted in SA’s in every office, factory and industry, in every shopping basket, home, and shop! The star of their show? A Peri Mayonnaise, Sour Cream Dip made with Ingrain Stygel AWM — “a true game-changer!”
The mighty Lactobacillus plantarum 423
Your ed’s highlight! I was fascinated to meet Dr Mark Bodley of IMS, a specialist microbiologist who does much consulting work in the food, medical and pharma arenas.
Over two lunches, he told me the fascinating work he’s done with a mighty organism, Lactobacillus plantarum 423, and its ability, via antimicrobial peptides (bacteriocins), to kill off multiple spoilage organisms/harmful pathogens, while its probiotic properties boost the immune system.
There’s a long story to be told about Bodley and his Lb 423; suffice for now, he’s rolling out its commercialisation.
First on shelf is viral eeze, a new Unicorn Clicks own-brand nasal spray.
You’ll want to have this in your handbag the next time you get onto an airplane! Watch this space for more on this fascinating story!
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