Flavour manufacturer Givaudan South Africa has inaugurated a new Consumer & Sensory Insights (CSI) centre at its production facility in Tulisa Park, Johannesburg, marking the first CSI centre for the group in Africa.

The CSI centre provides an interactive space for an expert panel to taste, smell and otherwise experience new flavours of food and beverages developed by the company.

Givaudan prides itself on creating consumer-centric food experiences by leveraging unique and local consumer and sensory understanding in every step of its food development journey.

At its Tulisa Park facility, food scientists are among the employees that manufacture flavouring extracts, syrups, powders and related products for the food and beverage industry.

The company believes consumer research is the key to improving a product and successfully marketing food products to target customers.

In turn, food choice, consumption and repeat purchases are largely decided by the sensory experience.

Therefore, sensory research, as done through the CSI centre, provides a deep-dive into the characteristics of products for Givaudan.

Givaudan commercial head for trade and wellbeing in the South Asia, Middle East and Africa region Antoine Khalil says it is crucial to comprehend the multimodal aspects of food and beverage experiences and translate them into multifaceted product solutions for customers and consumers.

At its Tulisa Park facility, Givaudan develops savoury and sweet goods, beverages and dairy flavours. Its expert tasting panel comprises 14 South Africans, who rate and describe samples according to Givaudan’s sensory language, called Sense It.

The panel uses science-based methodologies to profile ingredients or products, according to taste, flavour, texture, colour and other attributes.

The CSI was designed with special sensory software to run live data analysis, while panellists feed in their evaluations. The centre includes an area for sample preparation, fully equipped booths for product testing and a multipurpose meeting area for discussions.

With its South African CSI, Givaudan aims to strengthen its local flavour development capacity and complement the work of the other CSIs globally.

Givaudan South Africa is a subsidiary of Swiss multinational Givaudan, which was established about 250 years ago and has grown to operate across 185 locations in 52 countries. The South African operations were established in 1956 and employ 220 people.

The South African operations now comprise a sales and marketing division, research and development teams, a production factory, compounding laboratories and the CSI centre.

“The food sector is facing profound disruption, driven by rapidly changing consumer and customer needs. Our newly opened CSI will help us unlock local consumer insights and analyse technical sensory data to enhance our capabilities in creating food experienced that are loved by consumers,” Khalil states.