ProFound: 2021 Year in Review

While 2022 has started well for us at ProFound, we are happy to share a brief review of our past year with you 🙂
As the video is concluding, we are much looking forward to further build our amazing collaborations in the coming year!
We wish all our partners and collaborating entrepreneurs a very successful New Year 2022!
And, most importantly, we wish you happy times with your families and staying in good health!

BioFach eSpecial Update

For many of us, BioFach eSpecial was the first time we participated in a digital fair. Although it came with many challenges, such as navigating a new platform and getting used to meeting new partners through video calls, we believe it represents a great learning opportunity. While we look forward to meeting in person again (hopefully during BioFach 2022) we are also excited about the idea of being able to support our co-exhibitors through digital platforms in the future. In in this newsletter you can find the recordings of all our webinars. You can also take a few minutes to get to know our co-exhibitors through their 1-minute videos.

February 2021 – BioFach eSpecial

BioFach, Europe’s largest organic fair will be held online between the 17th and 19th of February and we will also join it with a digital version of our annual Organic Africa Pavilion. Every year, this is where African exhibitors find new business opportunities with buyers, agents and partners at BioFach.  This year we will also host a brand new BioTrade Asia Pavilion at BioFach. For both pavilions, we connect organic suppliers with international markets. Click here to read  everything you need to know about our pavilions at BioFach.

January 2021

With this newsletter, we say goodbye to a very restrictive 2020, and we like to welcome a hopefully much more open 2021, full of new adventures! Last year is definitely one to remember; it is difficult, to sum up, all of our feelings for such a complex year, but we are certainly happy that our team stayed healthy in this period. We hope much the same for you and your families. Click here to read how we ended 2020 and find out our latest updates for early 2021.

September 2020

With this newsletter, we celebrate ProFound’s 30th birthday! Click on the image to get to know our story a little bit better and to meet our new team members. We are also very proud to announce that we started two projects for the  Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ)  in Africa. In one of them, ProFound and a team of local experts will work on linking Gums and Resins collectors to the market. You can read more about the project on our website. 

April 2020

This newsletter gives an update on our projects in South East Asia when travelling was still possible at the beginning of 2020. The world is getting accustomed to remote working and so is ProFound. Read some articles related to our market intelligence work for the cocoa and coffee sector or about the kick-off of a new market analysis project for IFOAM.

January 2020

We tell you more about the reporting of the project HortIMPACT, conducted by our sister company in Kenya. Read our different activities in South East Asia such as supporting BSO, creating a strategy for sustainable sourcing and certification of coffee or our training related to market access for cardamom and turmeric in Myanmar and discover the events in our agenda for the coming months.

September 2019

We have been active in Kenya for over two years with our sister company Green Rhino. Read more about what happened there and the Healthy Green Choice initiative. We tell you more about our activities in Southeast Asia such as our activity as Marketing Expert to step up on the marketing of cardamom and turmeric in Myanmar or our work with Helvetas to support BSO in Myanmar, Vietnam and Laos.

June 2019

ProFound doesn’t only work with exporting companies. We also build capacities of business support organisations (BSOs) to work with suppliers in their development. Read in this newsletter what we’ve been up to since the beginning of the year 2019, like the kick off natural ingredients project in Indonesia or about the positive results observed by the coexhibitors at the Organic Africa Pavilion at BioFach 2019.

December 2018

We identified high potential product-market combinations in three natural ingredient sectors in Indonesia: seaweed, essential oils and plant extracts. Read all about it in our latest newsletter. Also get an update on our upcoming projects and our recent work. We developed a story for Pakistan, helped the launch of the South African natural ingredients strategy and found matches between buyers and suppliers from Tunisia, South Africa and Peru at SIAL. 

September 2018

Get an update on Gustavo Ferro’s activities in Colombia, paving the way for cocoa producers to international markets for Colombia+Competitiva. On behalf of CBI, we analysed both the supply side in Palestine and the European market to identify opportunities and possible interventions to develop the Palestinian MAPs sector. Read our newsletter for the full stories and an update on our upcoming work in Q4 2018.  

July 2018

ProFound’s sister company Green Rhino is in full swing. The company is accelerating activities in Kenya by working on food safety with several partners and companies. Read our latest newsletter for an update on agreements with SNV, Kirinyaga County, Mango producer Burton & Bamber/Sweetundam and Biovision Africa Trust. 

Also check our newsletter for an update of activities in Q2 and upcoming work in Q3 2018. 

March 2018

In March 2018, ProFound’s senior consultant Gustavo Ferro was conducting a Multisectoral Value Chain Analysis (VCA) in Central America for CBI’s new Export Coaching Programme (ECP). He visited six different countries to collect data for this analysis in collaboration with the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE). The VCA covered Specialty coffee, Cacao and derivatives, Fresh fruit and vegetables, Processed fruit and vegetables, Fish and seafood. Read Gustavo’s story in this newsletter.

December 2017

Hunza Organics, one of the participants in the CBI Natural Ingredients programme in Pakistan, just passed its first inspection for FairWild certification. We are proud that Hunza Organics used our certification tool the NI-CheckApp to make the implementation of sustainable collection standards cheaper and easier. We finalised our contribution to the World Bank’s strategy to increase local economic development in Eastern Indonesia. In 2017 we also facilitated a buyer mission in South-East Asia for the Regional BioTrade Project with Helvetas Swiss Intercooperation. Moreover, we launched the Healthy Green Choice project in Kenya.

October 2017

ProFound and CBI have made great progress in Northern Pakistan. We received an award from the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan for our work with natural ingredients. We look back on our work guiding suppliers around the world: from Ethiopia, South Africa and Tunisia to Colombia and Singapore. We are ready to pilot the NI-CheckApp with Pukka Herbs. The team also looks forward to continuing our work in Indonesia. Check out our latest impact story on BioTrade development in Southeast Asia.

May 2017

ProFound’s Market Potential Tool now covers both US and European market. In the trade fair season, ProFound consultants support suppliers to enter the European market. We have already started organising the Organic Africa Pavilion at Biofach 2018.

We are also looking forward to start working in Eastern Indonesia for the World Bank. Moreover, we will identify opportunities for Pakistani and Cambodian suppliers of value added rice products.

February 2017

In the first two months of 2017, ProFound consultants travelled to Ethiopia and Southeast Asia for various Natural Ingredients programmes.

At BioFach we supported the CBI pavilion and hosted 18 organic suppliers in our Organic Africa Pavilion.

November 2016

The second part of 2016 was full of important moments for ProFound. In November, we launched a new website full of our impact stories, solutions and core principles. We also won the bid for a Regional BioTrade project in South-East Asia, together with Helvetas Swiss Intercooperation and Klaus Dürbeck Consulting. In addition, we continued our work in Northern Pakistan, focusing on sustainable sourcing of high quality pine nuts.

July 2016

February 2016 marked the successful return of the Organic Africa Pavilion at Biofach 2016. Nine exhibitors from Ghana, Senegal, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe presented value-added and speciality products to Biofach visitors. Read our newsletter for more information about our impact through the Organic Africa Pavilion.

December 2015

At the end of 2015, we were busy preparing for the re-launch of the Organic Africa Pavilion at Biofach 2016. We’re working with companies from Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and Ghana. ProFound will build on this in future years. We’re offering organisations and individual companies the opportunity to get a full service package for a successful trade fair participation.

December 2014

In the second half of 2014, CBI selected us to carry out market research for seven sectors. These include natural ingredients for cosmetics, vegetable oils, coffee and honey and sweeteners. In the same period, we launched IN2NI: a network of natural ingredients experts, together with Klaus Dürbeck Consulting, Walter de Boeck and Josef Brinckmann.

July 2014

We analysed the European market potential of fresh fruits, natural ingredients and wild botanicals for both the German Import Promotion Desk (IPD) and the Belgian Technical Cooperation (BTC). We dove into the world of requirements, trends and competition to find the best match between product and market.

December 2013

We expanded our activities in Morocco, in the project for the UNDP/GEF PAM. ProFound engaged with the private sector and elaborated resource management strategies for the project species. Learn more about these activities in this newsletter.

September 2013

In the first half of 2013, we expanded our activities in Latin America. ProFound consultant Gustavo Ferro went to a seminar in Colombia on market access for Colombian companies to Europe. In May, our consultant Robbie Hogervorst guided PromPeru and a group of Peruvian companies at In-Cosmetics (Paris).

December 2012

In 2012, ProFound launched the ASPIRE programme in Ethiopia, with our partners SNV, Triodos-Facet and the Ethiopian Apiculture Board. We will support access to both domestic and export markets. Read more about the ASPIRE programme in our story on organic honey from Ethiopia.

December 2011

In 2011, ProFound welcomed two staff members from the Instituto Boliviano de Comercio Exterior (IBCE) to share knowledge and experience. Based on their experiences at our office, they can advise Bolivian exporters about their possible business relationships with European buyers. Read more about this interesting exchange in our newsletter of December 2011.

July 2011

In the first half of 2011, ProFound became a prominent service provider for the Matchmaking Facility (MMF) of NL Agency. MMF aims to stimulate business relations and strengthening the private sector in emerging market. Read more about this interesting consortium and ProFound´s input in this newsletter.

December 2010

In 2010, ProFound teamed up more closely with its sister-company Blue Rhino. This marked our joint ambition to contribute more to sustainable rural development in Africa.

June 2010

In the first half of 2010, we celebrated ProFound’s 20-year anniversary. We conducted market studies on sectors ranging from natural ingredients and cut flowers to household & furnishing textiles, fine-tuned our internal Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy and worked on the development of Forest Garden Products.