Biofach 2025: Baobab des Saveurs explores F&B applications of West African plants
28 Feb 2025 | Baobab des Saveurs
Baobab des Saveurs aims to promote, produce, and market natural and ethical ingredients derived from West African plants. The company’s manager, Pierre-Gilles Commeat, explained how this mission shapes its sourcing and production practices, such as offering a higher-than-market price for ethically sourced products. As many of the ingredients West Africa has to offer are still unknown globally, Commeat said there is a substantial opportunity to develop this market and discover innovative plants.
This is Yolande van Hal from Nutrition Insight.
I'm here at BOA 2025 with Pierre Gilles Kumma, who is the manager of Baobab de Saveur.
Thank you for joining us today, and I heard that your mission is to promote and market ethical, natural, and.
Innovative ingredients and I was wondering how that shapes your sourcing and production practices.
OK, thank you.
So yes, I'm Pierre Gilles from Barbab Saver, that's a company existing since 20 years in Senegal, West Africa.
Since the beginning, our mission was to make things ethically.
So when we are going to supply a new product, we are meeting the communities, we are seeing the mayor of the town, speaking with him, explaining the project.
After that we are speaking about the price.
We are we are seeing that the price will be higher than the price of the market.
We are also explaining how we are working.
OK, and can you share some of the biggest challenges or opportunities that you see in expanding West African ingredients to the global market?
One of the major problems for all companies in West Africa is arriving to have finances to be able to buy raw materials.
We are really faced with that problem.
So we usually need to have some advance from our customers, and that's not easy.
The opportunities is that people are not really knowing the products of West Africa, for example, the baobab, so there's a huge market to.
To, to, rise and to, yes, to develop.
OK, and I'm also curious, how do you identify new and innovative uses for West African plants in both food or cosmetic industries?
Yes, one part of my work is really to supply products, so I'm loving to be in the forest, and the fields, speaking with people.
So we are speaking with them about the different plants and what they are bringing to you.
Our people are using them as a medicine, so we are discovering every time some new plants and we are thinking of how to valorize them and to offer them to the people not only in Senegal but around the world.
How do you work with local communities and farmers to ensure ethical sourcing and fair trade practices?
OK, so usually we have Value chain meeting and we are speaking about the price and we are negotiating the price and seeing what are the problems in harvesting and we are deciding the price for 1 or 2 years.
OK, interesting.
And I'm also curious, what can you tell us about future plans for product development or expansion into new markets.
Now we are looking to have a new part in our company with medicinal plants because we are living in a dry country with a lot of very active molecules and plants, so we are trying to identify new plants, and to see how to process them.
And after that to propose them on the medicinal plant market.
Thank you so much.
Thank you very much.
