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11000+

customers

18000+

employees

14

innovation centers

110+

manufacturing facilities

7

Description

It's not a film. It's who we are.

olam food ingredients is now known as ofi. Focused on the raw materials and ingredient platforms that we're known for globally - cocoacoffeedairynuts, and spices. We still offer everything we did before. What’s new is that we’re adding capabilities - especially in product development - working closely with our customers, sharing our fresh ideas to inspire new concepts. Making it real at every step, from plant to palate.

It's not a new idea.
It's a chance for infinite possibilities.

It’s easy to make something taste amazing. It’s much harder to fill it with nutritional benefits too. And what about making sure it’s ethically sourced and right for the planet? Whatever category you’re serving, let’s supersede the benchmark with our portfolio of highly complementary natural and delicious ingredients. Co-creation is easy!

Bakery
Bakery

Your next cookie filling, cake topping, pie crust, biscuit crumb or bread mix starts with our playground of ingredients. Let’s get busy combining tastes, textures and colors that not only delight consumers, but also the people and planet around them. Give sweet treats a natural twist by combining our cocoa powder and nut pastes to create indulgent center-filled cookies with a premium texture. 

Beverages
Beverages

From cold brewed spiced coffee to golden milk made with dairy powder or nuts to suit modern consumer preferences. Even the most basic ingredient can make a real difference. With us, you can customize and co-create from plant to palate to find taste, texture and nutritional profiles that make your hot, cold, or plant-based beverages unique.

Chocolate & Confectionery
Chocolate & Confectionery

The world loves cocoa, in chocolate, confectionery, ice cream, bars and desserts. The need to make these better for our bodies and planet has never been greater. We’re bringing lots of fresh thinking to the table – like reducing sugar and sodium in recipes with clever cocoa creations and vegan, organic and traceable solutions. How about creating delicious vegan ‘milk’ chocolate bars with our gluten-free and grain-free cashew flour?

Dairy & Desserts
Dairy & Desserts

Emerging flavor trends in milks, yogurts and ice-creams are a real opportunity to create healthy, tasty, formulations that consumers can indulge in. Why not try new twists on familiar pairings, such as chocolate doughnut and coffee flavored ice cream? In cocoa alone, our R&D specialists can help tackle challenges in both dairy and plant-based desserts: from a unique methodology to pair cocoa powders with pea, nut, or oat bases to address taste, to reducing bitterness of FMP formats with our Fresco Cacao.

Savory & Culinary
Savory & Culinary

It’s great when you can respond to trends. It’s even better when you spark them yourself. Together, we can create sauces, nut-based cheeses, and spice blends that fulfil existing desires or even feed new ones. How about putting a new spin on traditional dishes with trend-led ingredients like our choco mole sauce inspired by the Oaxaca region of Mexico? Using authentic spices and premium cocoa, this sauce is rich in antioxidants with a deep color and enticing aroma that will delight the senses.  

Snacking
Snacking

Join our search for the next trail mix, cereal, or snack bar hit. Together, we can find new ingredient combinations that fulfil consumer desire for taste, texture, nutrition, and traceability. One idea? Take consumers on a journey through the world’s most vibrant cuisines with seasoned nut recipes drawing on our Blends of the Americas spice range, including Blanched Almonds with Spicy Citrus Coast and Candied Cashews with Warm Sedona Sunset.  

Plant-Based
Plant-Based

Your next cookie filling, cake topping, pie crust, biscuit crumb or bread mix starts with our playground of ingredients. Let’s get busy combining tastes, textures and colors that not only delight consumers, but also the people and planet around them. Give sweet treats a natural twist by combining our cocoa powder and nut pastes to create indulgent center-filled cookies with a premium texture.

It's not a new idea.
It's a chance for infinite possibilities.

It’s easy to make something taste amazing. It’s much harder to fill it with nutritional benefits too. And what about making sure it’s ethically sourced and right for the planet? Whatever category you’re serving, let’s supersede the benchmark with our portfolio of highly complementary natural and delicious ingredients. Co-creation is easy!

Bakery
Bakery

Your next cookie filling, cake topping, pie crust, biscuit crumb or bread mix starts with our playground of ingredients. Let’s get busy combining tastes, textures and colors that not only delight consumers, but also the people and planet around them. Give sweet treats a natural twist by combining our cocoa powder and nut pastes to create indulgent center-filled cookies with a premium texture. 

Beverages
Beverages

From cold brewed spiced coffee to golden milk made with dairy powder or nuts to suit modern consumer preferences. Even the most basic ingredient can make a real difference. With us, you can customize and co-create from plant to palate to find taste, texture and nutritional profiles that make your hot, cold, or plant-based beverages unique.

Chocolate & Confectionery
Chocolate & Confectionery

The world loves cocoa, in chocolate, confectionery, ice cream, bars and desserts. The need to make these better for our bodies and planet has never been greater. We’re bringing lots of fresh thinking to the table – like reducing sugar and sodium in recipes with clever cocoa creations and vegan, organic and traceable solutions. How about creating delicious vegan ‘milk’ chocolate bars with our gluten-free and grain-free cashew flour?

Dairy & Desserts
Dairy & Desserts

Emerging flavor trends in milks, yogurts and ice-creams are a real opportunity to create healthy, tasty, formulations that consumers can indulge in. Why not try new twists on familiar pairings, such as chocolate doughnut and coffee flavored ice cream? In cocoa alone, our R&D specialists can help tackle challenges in both dairy and plant-based desserts: from a unique methodology to pair cocoa powders with pea, nut, or oat bases to address taste, to reducing bitterness of FMP formats with our Fresco Cacao.

Savory & Culinary
Savory & Culinary

It’s great when you can respond to trends. It’s even better when you spark them yourself. Together, we can create sauces, nut-based cheeses, and spice blends that fulfil existing desires or even feed new ones. How about putting a new spin on traditional dishes with trend-led ingredients like our choco mole sauce inspired by the Oaxaca region of Mexico? Using authentic spices and premium cocoa, this sauce is rich in antioxidants with a deep color and enticing aroma that will delight the senses.  

Snacking
Snacking

Join our search for the next trail mix, cereal, or snack bar hit. Together, we can find new ingredient combinations that fulfil consumer desire for taste, texture, nutrition, and traceability. One idea? Take consumers on a journey through the world’s most vibrant cuisines with seasoned nut recipes drawing on our Blends of the Americas spice range, including Blanched Almonds with Spicy Citrus Coast and Candied Cashews with Warm Sedona Sunset.  

Plant-Based
Plant-Based

Your next cookie filling, cake topping, pie crust, biscuit crumb or bread mix starts with our playground of ingredients. Let’s get busy combining tastes, textures and colors that not only delight consumers, but also the people and planet around them. Give sweet treats a natural twist by combining our cocoa powder and nut pastes to create indulgent center-filled cookies with a premium texture.

ofi is already part of your everyday life…

1 in 5 chocolate bars consumed globally use our cocoa beans and products

The coffee beans we supply annually can provide around 90 billion cups of coffee

Our annual volume of dairy products can make 19 billion slices of cheese

Almonds we supply will produce enough flour to bake 350 million cupcakes per year

We add taste and flavor around the world with 270 million bottles of spices per year

Read ofi news

Articles Jan 15, 2025

Andrew Brooks

Head of Cocoa Sustainability, ofi

UN World Day Against Child Labour 2021: Putting children first in cocoa

By Andrew Brooks, Head of Cocoa Sustainability, olam food ingredients (ofi)
 

This week, the world’s attention turns to a heavy burden that can damage a child’s Health and Education: child labour.  In ofi's cocoa business, we are focused on solving this problem every day.

 

Most child labour in cocoa relates to children carrying out hazardous tasks on the family farm, distinct from the much rarer issue of forced labour, and has no one cause. Labour laws can be misunderstood, and schools might be located far away. Even if there is a school nearby, children may not have the documents they need to enrol. When combined with rural poverty, many parents think their child’s time is best spent helping on the farm. And now, these cocoa-growing communities are also battling a global health pandemic.

 

We’re working to tackle each of these challenges in turn. Under our  Cocoa Compass sustainability ambition, we aim to completely eradicate child labour from our direct supply chain by 2030 and ensure farmers’ children can access the education they are entitled to. In 2020, we reached the critical milestone of rolling out child labour monitoring across 183,000 households in nine countries.

 

There is still a lot to do, and collaboration with our customers, national governments, and civil society is essential. For example, we recently asked the Fair Labor Association (FLA) to assess the extent to which cocoa farmers and their families have benefited from our sustainability programmes in Côte d’Ivoire, their perception and satisfaction with these interventions, and help to refine our approach further.

 

Using a due diligence methodology called Social Impact Assessment, the FLA collected extensive data and interviewed over 450 people from ten cocoa communities, including women and children. It found that of all our efforts to tackle child labour, the setting up of child labour monitoring and remediation and enabling access to education are the most advanced and have the most significant impact.

 

It also revealed that over two-thirds of those interviewed think child labour is on the decline in their community, and 80% believe that the interventions by ofi and our partners are contributing to protecting children.

 

There are areas for improvement. The FLA suggested we provide additional support to help farmers access affordable labour. And ensure greater follow-up with Village Savings and Loans Associations to maximise their ability to promote child protection.

 

We know that combining our efforts through multi-stakeholder partnerships, championed by local and regional governments, and supported by international finance institutions, is the best way to create the kind of long-term systemic change needed to reach universal school attendance

and graduation for children in cocoa communities.

 

This World Day Against Child Labour reminds us that if we want to put children first in cocoa, we must be open to testing new approaches and adapting our efforts based on what works best. The future of a cocoa generation is at stake if we don’t.

Press Release Sep 25, 2024

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ofi’s net-zero ambition recognized at UK’s largest sustainable business awards

A new carbon monitoring tool developed by leading food ingredients supplier ofi and Google geo-spatial partner NGIS, has been recognized in the “Net-Zero Innovation of the Year” category at this year’s Edie awards, which celebrate sustainability leadership.

 

The tool is designed to measure carbon gains and losses across supply chains. It uses satellite imagery and machine learning to track changes in forest cover and carbon stocks at a granular level - down to the individual farm1. This data is helping ofi to identify areas at risk of deforestation and prioritize conservation efforts on cashew, cocoa and coffee suppliers’ farms and in sourcing landscapes.

 

Climate Action Manager at ofi, Dr Pedro Lafargue said: “We are delighted to be recognized for our innovative solution that is helping us monitor and measure GHG emissions and progress towards net-zero goals. Part of this is about driving transformational change in strategic landscapes which means keeping growing and retaining more trees on and around farms.

 

“Planting more trees is one of the ways to move towards net-zero, but carbon sequestration potential is highly dependent on tree species and farm typology. The tool allows us to assess the optimum level of planting for different farmers and farms so we can create more efficient agroforestry programs that maximize both yields and carbon storage.”

 

ofi’s customers, who are some of the world’s largest food retailers and manufacturers, can access results of the data-driven sequestration efforts in their joint supply chains via performance metrics on ofi’s sustainability management system AtSource. These insights can help them monitor and reduce their climate risk and meet science-based targets, as well as prepare for compliance with new EU rules and disclosures in relation to nature and climate risks.

 

The move by ofi to take carbon stock monitoring from a manual, desktop-based process to an integrated pipeline which leverages cloud computing, is allowing ofi to progressively scale this analysis across multiple commodities and regions – covering over 950,000 farms so far.

 

But Lafargue says that there’s a role for industry partners to play to scale up the innovation and progress towards net-zero at scale: “While the tool can help our customers quantify the ecosystem services provided to supply their ingredients and invest efficiently in better farming systems, we need them to recognize the efforts made by farmers to plant trees and maintain agroforestry systems with financial incentives, like annual premiums, to scale up these efforts over the long-term.”

 

Looking ahead, there is potential to take the tool beyond ofi supply chains to quantify carbon stocks and removals across entire production landscapes to provide better data for the industry on land use change and carbon removals. 

 

ofi was also a finalist in the Circular Economy of the Year award for using residual cocoa shells to fuel its cocoa factories2, where it produces its premium cocoa ingredients deZaan. The circular biomass boilers will reduce natural gas usage and CO2 emissions at ofi’s Koog aan deZaan facility in the Netherlands by 50% and in Mannheim, Germany, where it is believed to be the first cocoa shell boiler of its kind in the country, it will save approximately 8,000 tons of CO2 annually.

 

Discover much more about what ofi has to offer at ofi.com

 

Notes to Editors

 

1 The Carbon Sequestration Monitoring Tool combines data from ofi polygon-mapped farms and satellite data with machine learning techniques to build models in Google Earth Engine that calculate the total aboveground biomass (AGB) - vegetation above the soil, such as stumps, trees, and foliage and how much carbon is present in each plot.

 

2 https://www.ofi.com/news-and-events/press-release/olam-food-ingredients-turns-cocoa-shells-into-power-to-fuel-factory.html

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