Challenges and opportunities in the food fortification supply chain

By Claus Soendergaard, Global Application Specialist, BASF Food Fortification and Partnerships

Fortification of staple foods with essential vitamins and micronutrients is an important measure to improve micronutrient deficiencies in developing and emerging countries, where malnutrition is considered a severe public health problem. BASF manufactures micronutrients for the fortification of staple foods, which meet exceptional requirements in stability and efficacy even under extreme climatic conditions.

Edible oil, derived from plants or animals, for example is an excellent vehicle for fortification with vitamin A due to its widespread household and commercial use. We are a leading vitamin A producer offering special products for the fortification of vegetable oil, ghee, vanaspati, margarine and spread. The fortification process varies from factory to factory and from small batch production to large plants with continuous production.

But how can we ensure that the potency of vitamin A still meets the expectations after its long journey all the way from production, storage, blending, filling, transportation, warehouse and even withstanding high temperatures during the cooking process? It is all a matter of high quality and stability. This ensures a reliable potency of the vitamin – even in a challenging supply chain.

Technological competences and experience with regard to ensuring stability, choosing the right packaging to maintain freshness and potency during shelf-life and solutions for quality assurance and quality compliance create the opportunities to tackle the challenges in the supply chain.

Technical capacities, quality assurance and compliance systems are the gatekeepers for effective and reliable food fortification. Our BASF Test Kits are semi-quantitative screening tools that assess the concentration of Vitamin A in edible oil, flour, and sugar. This is a very cost-effective mini laboratory that makes quality control very practical to realize. In this sense, quality assurance can be affordable and ensure that the right quality maximizes the impact of food fortification.

Have a look at the recording of the session (presentation of BASF starts at 0:17 min.): Fortifying the Supply Chain – Addressing Premix Challenges