Our global presence
Farmers & Origination
Sourcing directly and indirectly from roughly 2.75m farmers
Providing sustainability support to roughly 483,000+ farmers
Improving traceability and transparency in your supply chain
Manufacturing & Processing
~110+ owned processing plants around the world
Managing how and where raw materials are processed
Offering you flexibility, choice and control
Innovation Centers
15 innovation centers near major consumption markets
Committed to finding solutions for product innovation
Turn your ideas into reality and delight consumers
ofi Offices
There's always an ofi team nearby
Your first point of contact when working with us
Experts in our products and closely connected to origins
Remaining invested in origins - building capacity in destination markets
It all starts on the farm. You need quality, traceability and reliable supply. Farmers need support to make their businesses sustainable. We can deliver it all.
Consumers want to know who grew their coffee and where their cocoa came from. We work closely with thousands of farmers and we have our own farms too, helping you to improve provenance.
Worldwide, we run sustainability programs designed to help farmers improve yield and quality and increase their incomes. Overall, we estimate we give sustainability support to more than 420,000 farmers and their communities.
As well as buying crops, we’re farmers ourselves. In Australia and the USA, we grow almonds. In Brazil and Vietnam, we have our own black pepper estates. And in Indonesia, we’re establishing a 2,000 hectare cocoa farm.
Choice, control, flexibility. With manufacturing and processing facilities around the world, we offer you all three. Get the most out of cocoa, coffee, dairy, nuts, and spices with ofi.
How do you like your nuts? We do whole, in pieces, as butter, paste, powders, oils and flavored. This is just one example of the choice and control you get when you work with ofi. We invest in the latest technology and always maintain the highest food safety and quality standards.
To improve efficiency and transparency, our facilities are strategically located in the country of origin or close to major consumption markets. For example, our soluble coffee processing facilities are based in Spain and Vietnam, with a third being built in Brazil. Our cocoa processing operations are based across Asia, Europe, Latin America and the USA. Read more about our nuts, spices and dairy operations too.
Delight consumers, grow your business, create real change for people and planet. Innovation isn’t just exciting; it’s baked into the ofi way of working.
On any given day, our teams of food scientists and chefs could be working with one of our customers on the launch of a new bakery product using nut-based flours and the darkest cocoa powder available; exploring unusual spice flavors for a brand extension in chocolate confectionery; helping a customer produce a plant-based cheese; or creating an easily reconstituted, affordable fat filled milk powder for developing markets.
Our 14 innovation centres are hives of creativity, totally in tune with local tastes and market needs. This is where we turn ideas into reality so you can keep meeting consumer demand and growing your business. Work with us to stay on top of trends and find new and better ways of doing things.
With a keen eye for customer quality and regulatory requirements, our innovation centres focus on:
- Co-creating brand extensions and reformulating existing customer products
- Developing exciting new products for the bakery, beverages, confectionery, plant-based, savory, snacks and bars categories
- Creating consumer feel-good products in line with health and dietary needs
- Developing the right sensory (taste, texture and color) experience in line with customer brands
- Developing clean label recipes, replacing additives and chemicals with natural ingredients
- Developing natural and plant-based alternatives to fit into existing customer brand families
Do you need natural, nutritious, delicious and traceable ingredients? Then speak to our customer teams. Wherever you’re based, there’s an office nearby.
What would you like to know about our products and ingredients? Ask away, our customer teams have detailed knowledge of our products and how they will fit into your applications. They’re also the bridge connecting you to the origin of your ingredients.
Discuss ingredient quality, innovation, even recipe development. Learn about local food and beverage trends, and get the latest supply-and-demand market insights. Above all, because we have offices in many time zones around the world, get this support and advice when you need it.
Read ofi news
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.
Do you want to make it real?
Speak to ofi about sourcing high-quality food ingredients, innovating to delight consumers, and improving your sustainability credentials.
