Bel Group has opened a new factory in Côte d’Ivoire for production of The Laughing Cow cheese, described as “the company’s first industrial installation in sub-Saharan Africa”.
The plant in Abidjan, the country’s largest city, marks another step for Bel on the African continent, where it enjoyed sales growth of 8% in 2015 and already employs around 3,500 people and operates production plants in three separate countries.
This latest site has a production capacity of 20m cheese portions a year, covers 4,200 square metres of land and is expected to create an additional 20 jobs for the local economy during this year alone, Bel said. It is the result of an initial investment of €3m from the France-headquartered dairy group.
It will be used to supply cheese for the domestic market and was designed, assembled and tested at Bel’s research and innovation centre in France, before being shipped in 14 containers to West Africa, in a feat of “miniaturisation”.
“This unique plant demonstrates once again Bel’s singular expertise in the field of miniaturisation and the innovative capacity of our manufacturing teams,” said Huber Mayet, general manager of manufacturing and technical operations, research and innovation for Bel. “Today, we produce 100,000 portions of cheese every day with the same food quality and safety standards found at all Bel Group plants. It’s a technological feat, but it’s also the result of a successful skills transfer between the French teams and the 12 employees of the Côte d’Ivoire plant, which is now operating fully autonomously.”
Bel chairman and CEO Antoine Fiévet added: “It’s truly a pleasure to inaugurate Bel’s first manufacturing site in West Africa. It’s a new milestone for us on the African continent, which has historically been a growth market for Bel. Our strategy calls for producing our products as close to our consumers as possible, as soon as that’s possible. With this new site, we can supply the Côte d’Ivoire market and keep a manufacturing lead-time. That’s the rationale for this project, which would not have been possible without the support of Ivorian officials and our local partners.”
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