Millhouse International exports 95% of its vitamin A sugar premix to the Southern African Development Community from its factory at the Dube TradePort Special Economic Zone, writes Shirley le Guern.
For the CEO of South Africa’s only micronutrient premix (palmitate) manufacture, this represents the realization of a longstanding dream.
Andre Redinger was born into a family who had farmed sugar in the Midlands for generations. However, it was while he was focusing on growing and milling sugarcane that he realised that primary agriculture producers had no opportunity to derive value from their produce as their selling price was dictated.
“This adversely affects the farmer’s ability to positively impact the lives of farm workers through education, housing, health and skills transfer. The only way out is for farmers to add value to their produce,” he says.
His personal quest for value-add opportunities saw him travel throughout Africa looking at other primary agricultural models. He found that families could only afford about 50g of sugar a week, and it was seen as a vital source of energy as well as an important opportunity to address malnutrition issues.
In other African countries, it has now become law that vitamin A is added to sugar. Because sugar is seen as a staple food that reaches a large portion of the population, it is seen as an ideal means of adding vitamin A to diets.
In 2009, Redinger started experimenting with vitamin A additives, but he soon discovered a few roadblocks. Not only were all the recipes dictated by the World Health Food Programme and foreign multinationals, but local companies were prevented from supplying blends and nutrient solutions. Undeterred, he increased production and started to deliver vitamin A-enriched sugar to areas in SA that had the highest known vitamin A deficiencies.
“In SA, 33% of children under the age of six have a poor vitamin A status. About 65% of children aged between three and five are most affected, especially children living in rural areas,” he said. By 2010, Redinger had not only set up Millhouse within Dube TradePort, but concluded formal alliances with vitamin and micronutrient producers to assist them technically with food fortification. He also developed relationships with government departments throughout SADC and set up contracts with all the mills in these countries to supply palmitate for sugar.
Redinger says that locating his company at Dube not only helped overcome difficulties at the set-up stage, but also helped the company to contain costs and even survive a price war with multinationals which tried to push Millhouse out of the market.
“When you’re up against a perception that anything produced in Africa is substandard, flying in clients and partners to visit the Millhouse plant is such a pleasure. When they see DTP’s infrastructure, people are absolutely impressed. It’s a wonderful flagship for SA,” says Redinger. From its base in Durban, Millhouse intends running a “very aggressive campaign” to assist growers and millers in client countries, as well as provide equipment, knowledge and annual training in fortification, food analysis and safety, so they can fortify their own brands. Millhouse is also assisting micro-growers and millers in Tanzania to standardise their levels of food fortification.
Looking to the future, Redinger is looking at other vitamins to add to blends as well as instant foods and porridges.