TORONTO — SunOpta Inc. announced its SunOpta Africa subsidiary has entered an alliance with Specialized Protein Products of South Africa (S.P.P.) to manufacture and sell liquid and powdered soy ingredients and soymilk beverages in Africa and other international markets. S.P.P. operates a facility in Potchefstroom, South Africa, that has capacity of more than 200,000 liters of concentrated soymilk per day, as well as the capacity to produce 20 tonnes per day of high quality soymilk powder.

Under terms of the alliance, SunOpta said it will work with S.P.P. plant operations to improve quality control processes and reduce production costs and water usage through a series of technology improvements. In addition, SunOpta said it will work with local farmers in the Southern Africa region to implement programs to improve the quality of soybeans that the facility will use for manufacturing.

"We believe this relationship will add value to the food and agricultural processing industry in South Africa and serve to improve quality and nutritional attributes of food products in the region," said Allan Routh, president of the SunOpta Grains & Foods Group, and Peter Golbitz, director of international business development in the SunOpta Grains & Foods Group. "In hand with this, the first-class infrastructure, lower production costs and enhanced reach that South Africa gives us for exports should help make these products competitive internationally and allow us to continue to grow our global foods business."