The competition is organised by financial journalist and entrepreneur Marc Ashton and supported by highly respected marketer and author Scott Cundill from Majestic Interactive.

“Locally there has been a lot of focus on start-ups – particularly in the technology sector – but start-ups are initially low impact employing a handful of skilled people and run very high failure rates,” says Ashton.

“What about the businesses that have already done the legwork, made their mistakes and are now looking to scale up? That is where a competition like Punk Your SME comes in,” he adds.

Based on the “Pimp your ride” reality TV concept, the competition will every three months see the team giving away advertising, marketing material, technology to make small businesses run better as well as a round table mentoring and strategy session with top South African entrepreneurs to provide suggestions for scaling the business up.

The competition also provides an opportunity for the organisers to collect data toward their Entrepreneur Confidence Index which will provide relevant information on entrepreneurial activity in South Africa as well as try identify pains that the small business sector may be experiencing.

How to get involved:
Entrepreneurs looking to get involved with the competition can send an e-mail to marc@rival.co.za with the subject line: “I Want To Punky My SME”.

Alternatively entrepreneurs can join the “Punk Your SME” Facebook group to be kept up to date with industry happenings.

One of the key strategies for the organisers is to leverage the “social lending” spirit which is becoming increasingly prominent in South Africa. Those looking to contribute skills, services, mentoring, products or make cash donations which can be put toward each quarters’ prize can contact Marc Ashton on 082-561-1585 or e-mail to discuss further.

Stratfor reports that a spokesman for Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said April 13 that the Indigenization and Empowerment Act has been rendered null and void following a cabinet meeting.

This is potentially a critical development for Zimbabwe, South Africa and the African continent as a whole following economic collapse in Zimbabwe. This has had a significant knock-on effect to neighbouring countries which have been forced to absorb refugees from this region and has deterred foreign investment as government officials have attempted to enforce a law which threatened to force all foreign companies in Zimbabwe with assets worth more than $500,000 to sell a majority ownership stake to black Zimbabweans by 2015.

In December 2009, geo-political analysts had suggested to ManufacturingHub.co.za that president Mugabe’s grip on power in Zimbabwe was coming to an end with the more aggressive expecting him to relinquish power before the end of 2010.

With the Indigenization Law being a corner-stone of president Mugabe’s rein in power, this would appear to put these predictions on target despite some bickering between the Tsvangarai and Mugabe power-sharing agreement.

Although there are signs that consumer spending trends have started to improve (or at least to stabilise), the rating agency does not envisage changing the industry sector outlook to positive in the near term.

“Moody’s does not anticipate a marked pick-up in demand for the global beverages industry in 2010, although volume performance should improve after a very challenging 2009. However, regional differences remain: a decline in volumes continues in most mature, developed markets such as the US and Western Europe, whilst Asia and Latin America have shown more
resilience, supporting top-line growth for companies exposed to thoseregions,” says Yasmina Serghini-Douvin, a Paris-based Moody’s AssistantVice President-Analyst.

Moody’s observes that Eastern European countries, including Russia, have experienced slower-than-expected economic growth which is projected to only gradually recover in H2 2010. The rating agency also notes that business conditions in Japan have stabilised, although domestic growth opportunities in that country remain limited.

Moody’s predicts that volumes will likely remain soft in 2010 across all segments of the global beverage industry, although the rating agency believes that volume trends have already reached a trough. Nonetheless, Moody’s highlights that governments are seeking to wipe out national deficits via excise duty on alcoholic beverages, and cautions that the tightened regulatory environment in Europe — where a number of duty increases on alcoholic beverages came into effect in January 2010 — will
create an additional burden for the industry.

Moody’s expects corporate activity to continue across the global beverage industry in the next 12 to 18 months, although not on the scale of 2007-2008. Recently, the North American market witnessed significant developments from leading soft beverage companies which led Moody’s to take rating actions. The Coca-Cola Company (rated Aa3, stable) and PepsiCo (Aa3, stable) reshaped their relationships with some of their key bottlers, as well as with others in the industry such as Dr Pepper Snapple. Overall, the rating agency believes that beverage companies will maintain prudent financial policies overall, with moderate returns to shareholders and investments.

This Moody’s Industry Outlook titled “Global Beverage Industry Outlook — Volume pressures ease but focus on costs and prudent financial policies continue overall” is available on www.moodys.com.

On Monday 15 March, the Water Research Commission (WRC) hosted a media workshop addressing the topic of nano-technology, and its role in the field of water treatment. The WRC intends to hold several such workshops each year in order to give media and interest groups access to their findings on relevant water issues.

The talks served to highlight the complex nature and broad scope of water treatment in South Africa. General perception of water treatment emphasises the purification of drinking water as the key component of water treatment, but this is only a small piece of the bigger picture. It was pointed out that the agricultural sector accounts for 50% of the country’s total water consumption, with a further 35% going to industrial usage, and only 15% allocated to Local Authorities and Water Services Institutions. The purity requirements for industrial and agricultural water are, as one might expect, substantially less stringent than those for drinking water. This means that the main consideration for water treatment in these areas is not the purification of water which is to be used, but the treatment of wastewater before it is discharged and the remediation of contaminated groundwater.

The diversity of industry in South Africa demands a wide range of treatment methods for industrial wastewater. Professor Maggy Momba of the Tshwane University of Technology outlined some of the most prevalent methods, and how nano-technology can potentially improve them. Treatment through chemical reactions that eliminate harmful contaminants is one such treatment method. Examples of this include the chemical reduction of metal ions and organic molecules such as alkanes.

Nano-technology can facilitate these chemical treatments in three ways. Firstly, catalyst particles on the nano-scale offer a higher surface area relative to their mass than larger particles, thus offering greater catalytic activity. Secondly, the reacting chemical species themselves, if produced on the nano-scale, offer larger reactive surface area relative to their weight. Thirdly, nano-reactive membranes can be produced by incorporating nano-scale catalyst particles into nano-fibres which are woven into a membrane. Fluids passing through such membranes are more effectively contacted with these catalyst particles than is the case with conventional methods.

The large scale treatment of drinking water in South Africa is relatively straightforward: sedimentation to remove large particles, flocculation with aluminium sulphate to remove colloidal particles and dissolved solids, possibly followed by disinfection with low concentrations of chlorine. However, South Africa’s widely dispersed population makes water distribution highly problematic. According to Dr. Marelize Botes of the University of Stellenbosch, decentralisation of water treatment is the most feasible approach for extending water supply to remote areas. The prevalent method for water treatment in South Africa, sedimentation followed by flocculation, is suitable primarily for large-scale treatment operations.

Alternative technologies, suitable for small scale point-of-use water treatment operations, must be pursued. A further complication is that those areas in most urgent need of improved water supplies also lack other basic infrastructure such as electricity.

Thus, to be considered as a solution to South Africa’s clean water shortage, a technology must be affordable on a small scale, operate without regular maintenance and require a minimum of expertise to set up, while also being versatile enough to cope with a wide range of contaminants.

This is a daunting set of requirements, which cannot be met by any existing technology. The pursuit of revolutionary water treatment technologies is critical if universal access to clean water is to be achieved. Nano-technology is one such avenue of research, promising a variety of options for enhanced water treatment.

Reverse Osmosis is perhaps the most promising water treatment option for purification of drinking water. Making use of a membrane with pore size sufficiently small to permit no solid contaminants, Reverse Osmosis processes are of particular interest for their versatility; they are capable of removing all solid contaminants, including viruses, as well as dissolved solids like salt. Nanofibres can be woven to produce membranes with high porosity and permeability but very small pore size, admitting high flow rates of water, while effectively removing all contaminants. The high ratio of surface area to volume of fibres on the nano-scale also results in a high removal capacity before membrane saturation occurs. The University of Stellenbosch is conducting ongoing research into the production of nano-fibres through a process called electro-spinning.

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Looking for a quality supplier? Check out the ManufacturingHub.co.za business services section.

The need for ongoing confidence in the competence of laboratories is not only essential for laboratories themselves and their customers, but also stakeholders such as regulators, laboratory accreditation bodies and other organizations.

ISO/IEC 17043, Conformity assessment – General requirements for proficiency testing, specifies general requirements for the competence of providers of proficiency testing schemes and for the development and operation of proficiency testing schemes.

Proficiency testing involves use of interlaboratory comparisons in the determination of a laboratory’s performance and, more specifically, in its on-going competence. Laboratories demonstrate their competence by complying with ISO/IEC 17025:2005, General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories, and the need for additional confidence in their results is achieved through their participation in interlaboratory comparisons managed by proficiency testing provider operating in accordance with ISO/IEC 17043.

The new standard addresses management, planning, design and personnel of the proficiency testing provider. In addition to requirements on the development and operation of proficiency testing, it contains informative annexes on the following:

* Typical types of proficiency testing schemes
* Suitable statistical methods
* Selection and use of proficiency testing schemesby laboratories, accreditation bodies, regulators and other interested parties.

ISO/IEC 17043 is an improvement on and replacement for the two-part ISO/IEC Guide 43:1997.

Dan Tholen, convenor of the group of experts that developed the standard, comments, “There is intense international interest in ISO/IEC 17043. Many ILAC (International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation) members and regions have plans to implement it and are actively planning or conducting training on the new standard. ILAC and its regional cooperations are taking steps to extend their Mutual Recognition Arrangements to include proficiency testing.”

CEO Mike Allan and his team were put through the ringer in 2009 with an absolutely torrid year for smaller consumer businesses and it showed in the interim  results that were released yesterday.

Salient numbers for the six months ended 31 December 2009:

Turnover:            Declined from R38m to R28.5m
Operating loss:            R69000
Net loss:            R1.3m
Cash & cash equiv:        Decreased by R800000 to R7.6m
Net asset value per share:     1.95c (trading at 2c)

All in all some grim numbers but if you drill a little deeper there were one or two figures which need to be watched a bit more closely:

Cash flows from operating activities: Swung from a negative R4.7m to a positive R1.4m
Short-term borrowings: Down from R17m to R2.6m
Gross profit margin: Stayed stable year on year

We believe that the improvement in the operating cash-flows are the first signs that the business is turning although we have some concerns that there may need to be some form of capital injection in the coming months unless operating conditions improve. The group has said it expects to be profitable by June 2010.

Plan unfolding
Our key takeaway in 2008 was that management needed to show they had a plan and in follow-up interviews with Mike Allan we were convinced that the group had in fact worked out a sustainable turnaround strategy, even if some of it was a bit touch-and-go given the operating environment.

This was evident in:
A) Clear-cut strategy around reducing manufacturing and packaging costs
B) Improved cash flow
C) Identifying and “fleshing out” their cornerstone brands – BioHarmony and Muscle Science

An important point to highlight for the firm was that in 2009 there was no build-up around the Patrick Holford / BioHarmony product lines as had been experienced in 2008. Wellness guru Holford did not come through to South Africa which meant that BioHarmony lost out on its key anchor marketing tool for the year.

On this front, Allan commented: “Bioharmony`s 13-part television series `Naturally You`, featuring Patrick Holford, is a first for the nutritional supplement industry in South Africa and initial indications are that it is indeed having the desired effect.”

Other moves taken by management to over the year to rejuvenate the company include:

• Xplode launched as a brand with ready-to-drink beverages and shots
• Staminade launched as a brand with ready-to-drink beverages and bars
• Muscle Science re-launched in new packaging and re-formulated
• Muscle Science bars launched
• Herbology, re-formulated and re-branded, has increased its listings into additional customers

Conclusion
We make no secret of the fact that we are fans of this company in the long run and that we intend to add to our shareholding here.

When Allan spoke to ManufacturingHub.co.za last year he looked tired and it was apparent that the tough economic conditions were taking their toll. However he came across well and it was apparent he was working to a plan.

We conclude that the turnaround at Bioscience is well underway and remain upbeat about the prospects for the group going forward.

This series aims to:* Raise awareness of the relevance and importance of traceability* Highlight important aspects and associated subject matter* Help manufacturers and distributors who are proposing to implement or improve traceability systems to make sound investments in sub-systems that work together.

This series aims to
* Raise awareness of the relevance and importance of traceability
* Highlight important aspects and associated subject matter
* Help manufacturers and distributors who are proposing to implement or improve traceability systems to make sound investments in sub-systems that work together rather than making inappropriate investments in sub-systems that are unable to inter-operate
* Provide a resource to manufacturers that can be used as the basis for a checklist for traceability system implementation

An unsafe product scenario
To set the scene, consider the hypothetical scenario of a bottle of flavoured milk. The bottle has a batch number and expiry date printed on it. The label says that its ingredients comprise low fat milk, sucrose, cocoa powder, stabilisers, permitted flavourants and colourants. In the event that the manufacturer investigates a consumer complaint and becomes aware that this batch of flavoured milk is unsafe, the manufacturer should be able to precisely identify the source of each of its ingredients and the container.
The ingredients label on our bottle includes the term “permitted colourants”. What were the actual colourants used to manufacture the contents of this bottle of flavoured milk? There may have been more than one colourant used to achieve the required colour. The manufacturer needs to have this detail archived for fast and accurate retrieval. For simplicity, assume that only one colourant was used and the manufacturer of the flavoured milk identifies that this was contaminated. The manufacturer may have more than one supplier of this colourant. What was the lot number of the colourant? Who supplied the colourant used in this bottle of flavoured milk? Perhaps the colourant was not supplied by the primary producer but by an importer or distributor. If there is a problem with this colourant, can the importer rapidly identify his supplier of this colourant? Can his supplier (let us assume that this is the primary producer of the colourant) identify the suppliers of the ingredients that went into this lot of this colourant? These suppliers may be a mix of industrial producers and farms. If the substance is an agricultural product, we might want to ask to what pesticide treatments this particular crop was exposed.

There is another gotcha here. Having found that there is a problem with this particular lot of colourant, is each organisation in its supply chain able to identify where other parts of this lot went? Is it necessary to retest and/or recall other products?

This is a very simple example. We started with a bottle of flavoured milk and have only brushed the surface of tracing the provenance of a single ingredient. However, it helps to illustrate that traceability requires a continuity of accurate data capture and record keeping from primary producer through to retailer.

What is traceability?
Broadly speaking, traceability refers to the ability to trace a substance through all stages of the supply and manufacturing chains.

Formal definitions of traceability
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is a world-wide federation of national standards bodies that promotes the development of standardisation and international standards for a wide range of products. ISO 9000 guidelines are quality management system standards. The ISO 9000:2000 Guidelines define traceability as the “ability to trace the history, application or location of that which is under consideration.”

From a food perspective, European Union (EU) Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 defines traceability as “The ability to trace and follow a food, feed, food-producing animal or substance intended to be, or expected to be incorporated into a food or feed, through all stages of production, processing and distribution.”

Why implement traceability?
There are many factors that motivate the implementation of traceability systems. These include:
* Supply management improvements
* Regulation
* Voluntary adoption of standards
* Safety and quality
* Brand value
* Expanded market / market share
* Economic / Profitability
* Customer imposed requirement

Supply management improvements
The successful implementation of traceability systems helps to identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies in the supply chain. Resolution of these reduces distribution costs. Traceability and tracking yield productivity gains resulting from improved marking, data capture and data retrieval. Stock-turn ratios are improved as a result of faster order fulfilment and more consistent delivery lead times. Improved stock rotation results in reduced losses from past sell-by date and age degraded products.

Regulation
In certain industries and trading blocs traceability is mandated by regulation.

In most countries an appropriate governing body requires the use of suitable traceability systems in pharmaceutical and medical device manufacture and distribution. In South Africa the Medicines Control Council administers this. In the USA this task falls under the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

South African Government Notice R908 of 2003/06/27 requires owners of food handling enterprises to have in place “a HACCP system fully implemented to the satisfaction of the relevant authorised health authority in relation to the foodstuffs under consideration…”.

The US National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods (NACMCF) lists a set of prerequisites for HACCP  (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) implementation. One of these is that “All raw materials and products should be lot-coded and a recall system in place so that rapid and complete traces and recalls can be done when a product retrieval is necessary.”

EU Regulation (EC) 2065/2001 concerns the compulsory labelling of fish and requires traceability to catch area, vessel identification, capture method and more. Similar regulations are in place in many countries to address sustainability of natural resources, food safety and the humane treatment of living creatures.

In member countries of the EU Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 mandates traceability in the production, processing and distribution of food and animal feed products from primary production to final consumer. When it was promulgated, this requirement logically appeared to extend to manufacturers outside the EU who export such products for consumption in the EU. Subsequently, Regulation (EC) No 852/2004 confirmed that “Food imported into the Community is to comply with the general requirements laid down in Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 or satisfy rules that are equivalent to Community rules.”

In December 2004 the FDA issued its final rules on maintaining food traceability records under the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness Act of 2002. In terms of this all companies that manufacture and transport food products must maintain records that identify the immediate previous source and subsequent recipient of the food they distribute. The regulations apply to entities that “manufacture, process, pack, transport, distribute, receive, hold, or import food”, although farms and restaurants are excluded. The FDA can request shipment records when it “has a reasonable belief that an article of food is adulterated and presents a threat of serious adverse health consequences or death to humans or animals.” Entities must make records available within 24 hours of official request, or face civil action in federal court. Failure to maintain the necessary documentation can result in criminal charges.

The Bioterrorism Act requires those entities that pack, process and export food to the USA comply with certain requirements. These relate principally to registration with the US government, a process of prior notice of exports to the USA, and a requirement to maintain records to enable traceability of food supplied.

Voluntary adoption of standards
Frequently organisations or whole industries in a region will elect to adopt an established set of non-mandatory standards in order to help them achieve their manufacturing and profitability objectives and to benefit from the synergies of this approach.

European Article Numbering (EAN) standards and Supply Chain management solutions firmly entrench traceability principles along with tracking, tracing, marking and data exchange standards.
The SA Guide to GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice for Medicines in South Africa) is another example of a standard or guideline that requires traceability. An extract from section 1.3.2 reads: “The basic requirements and objectives of Good Manufacturing Practice are as follows:
(i)            records of production, control and distribution which enable the complete history of a batch to be traced, are retained in a comprehensible and accessible form
(k)           system is available to recall any batch of product from sale or supply”

Safety and quality
Traceability systems result in reduced costs associated with recall and litigation and improved response times to product quality problems. The cost of recall can be limited to specific batches or to product manufactured by specific operators or at particular manufacturing stations. Without suitable systems in place there may be significant costs involved in bringing in outside auditors to work through manufacturing documentation to try and establish an audit trail so that contaminated lots can be identified.
Organisations are coming to view traceability systems as an essential part of their risk management toolbox.

A brand is an immensely valuable asset. For brands like Coca-Cola or Perrier brand values are measured in billions of dollars. Both of these brands have suffered damage in Europe as a result of product recalls. When problems that require a product recall occur, brand value will suffer least where systems facilitate rapid withdrawal by the manufacturer and supply chain before such product reaches the final consumer.

A Product that meets internationally recognised compliance guidelines establishes higher recognition from customers and suppliers, thus building brand value.

Brand value is an “after incident” victim. A brand suffers damage when an unsafe product comes into the market.

Perrier only started to return to break-even in 2003, after the 1990 recall of 280 million bottles of water in which trace amounts of the carcinogen, benzene, were found. That single incident cost Perrier almost US$200 million, marred its image and opened up the niche market that it had dominated to a large number of new arrivals.The ability to identify and pull contaminated product in a targeted way means that harm to brand value can be limited and consumers can continue to purchase the brand with confidence.

In the 2003 Pick ‘n Pay incident, turnover was actually enhanced through competent recall and well-managed consumer communication. A survey conducted at the time by Research Surveys found that “65% of respondents who were aware of the food scare feel that Pick ‘n Pay have handled the incident to the best of their ability. Twenty four percent felt that it was handled fairly well, but that it could have been handled better, and only12% of those polled felt the retailer had not handled the incident very well.“

Expanded market / market share
Business are achieving increase turnover and premium pricing as a result of changed consumer perception concerning intangible or hard-to-identify product and brand characteristics that rely on traceability for their credibility. Dolphin-friendly tuna fishing, organic foods, non-genetically modified foods, vitamin-enriched foods and beverages, pharmaceuticals not tested on animals and fair-trade products are just some examples. Without credible traceability systems and audits these differentiators would have limited influence on consumer preferences.

Many buyers and consumers prefer products that have been manufactured under well-defined, controlled and recorded conditions. With appropriate manufacturing records in place, quality becomes another selling tool.
If manufacturers are unable to meet new regulations then their markets diminish. Conversely new markets open up if suitable control systems are in place.

Economic
All the above factors have a significant impact on an organisation’s turnover and profitability.
Customer imposed requirement
Manufacturers, distributors, retailers and consumers are requiring their suppliers to have verifiable traceability systems in place for many of the reasons listed.

Where does traceability fit in my process?
It is clear from the definitions of traceability that this is an end-to-end process. Whether you are an importer, a manufacturer, a distributor or a logistics operation, your traceability starts with materials receiving (Who is this coming from? What is it? What lot number? What expiry date? What sample metrics?), continues through manufacture / aggregation / bulk break (In which plant or manufacturing area was it manufactured? Which lots of which components went into which manufactured lots? What are the sample metrics of the manufactured item? What is its expiry date?) and is a necessary part of materials despatch (To whom was each lot of the manufactured item sent? When? On what waybill / delivery note / invoice?).
What are the implications of my implementing traceability?
In order to implement traceability successfully within an enterprise you need to capture the necessary information at source in an accurate, efficient and reliable manner. Traceability needs to embrace “real world” / “on event” capture of information as opposed to pre-emptive / post-event transaction capturing. It does not involve trying to capture information on what we planned to use, nor on what we should have used, but on what we actually used.

This may mean agreement on suitable labelling, marking or identification specifications (bar coding, RFID…) and lot numbering systems between your business and your suppliers. Or it may mean the application of your own internal lot numbering methodology and re-labelling at material receiving.
It may also mean the introduction of bar code readers or RFID readers and marking systems within your manufacturing processes in order to record component usage and the use of bar code printers or RFID writers to mark manufactured and semi-manufactured product.
With such procedures in place you will need systems to archive and retrieve the captured information.

What are the implications of my failing to implement traceability?
According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), in the period 1990 to 2003, multi-ingredient foods, where the contaminated ingredient was not identified, were linked to 601 food-poisoning outbreaks and 18,006 illnesses. There is growing consumer concern and reaction to this failure to identify contaminated ingredients.
The wide-scale introduction of regulations enforcing the use of traceability systems and increasing consumer awareness mean that manufacturers who do not embrace traceability can expect:

* Non-compliance notices in the public domain
* Fines
* Diminishing market shares
* Closure
* Litigation
In forthcoming articles…
Forthcoming articles will address points to consider when planning a traceability project, such as:
* Lot and batch numbering
* Marking
* Equipment and software selection
and process-specific suggestions relating to:
* Materials receiving, sampling and inspection
* Manufacturing
* Dispatch
* Stocktake
and more.

References
BusinessWeek. The Global Brand Scoreboard. 2 August 2004.
Center for Science in the Public Interest. Outbreak alert! 4 April 2004.
EAN International. Traceability Management tools for agriculture, food and beverage products. February 2004.
European Parliament and the Council of the European Union Regulation (EC) No 2065/2001 of 22 October 2001.
European Parliament and the Council of the European Union Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 of 28 January 2002.
European Parliament and the Council of the European Union Regulation (EC) No 852/2004 of 29 April 2004.
ISO (2000). ISO 9000:2000. Quality Management Standards.
Research Surveys: How will the poison scare affect shoppers?
RSA Department of Health Government Notice R.908 of 27 June 2003.
RSA Medicines Control Council. Good Manufacturing Practice for Medicines in Douth Africa. January 2004.
US Food and Drug Administration Fact Sheet on FDA’s New Food Bioterrorism Regulation: Establishment and Maintenance of Records. December 2004.
US National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods. Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point Principles and Application Guidelines adopted August 14, 1997.

About the authors
Andrew Ashton has qualifications in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and commerce.  He has worked in and been providing automation solutions to the food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries for the past 27 years. He enjoys the challenge of helping clients to integrate their business management systems with front-end applications that facilitate traceability.

Marc Ashton has organised conferences focusing on food factory floor operations and systems and is a regular contributor to business-to-business publications in the food, pharmaceutical, logistics and IT arenas. Marc makes a point of keeping abreast of trends in the food and pharmaceutical industries both locally and internationally.
Both are directors of ProLoCon (Pty) Ltd, a company that manufactures software for formulation management, industrial dispensing, shop floor capture of traceability data and logistics.

Traceability in Manufacturing and Distribution
The first in a series of articles covering the important and topical subject of traceability.