The Triumph Of Perseverance And Conviction

Posted on May 23, 2021

DON EBUBEOGU

Immodest as it may sound, permit me to share the success of one of the best food seasoning powder made on the Nigerian soil.

In 2007 we started our journey into our quest to start the production of Larsor Seasonings with Symega Food Ingredients Ltd., India. Symega is a subsidiary of Synthite Industries Pvt Ltd.

Synthite’s deep-rooted understanding of extractives and derivatives of spices and Symega’s exceptional understanding of seasoning and flavour technology form the basis of our choice for partnership with them.

They were open-minded to transfer seasoning production technology to us and help us start our production of Larsor Seasoning in Nigeria. This understanding was discussed and agreed upon the same day we had our first meeting with the CEO of Symega Foods Ingredients Ltd in Kerala, India when Omega Flavours Technology (Austria) was still in partnership with them.

Larsor, a slang picked from the street by Celestine Ebubeogu , connotes words like goodness, excellence, acceptance, beautiful, that represent the essence of Larsor Seasoning.

In the early 1980s, in some part of Alaigbo, teenagers use words like ‘Suria’ when they dribble football in-between the opponent’s legs or ‘Larsor’ when a goal is too good or a ball-pass is beautifully completed with style. Larsor was not limited to the football field then, it was also used to appreciate a good sense of fashion. Larsor symbolizes positivity.

By choosing Larsor as a brand for the food seasoning, we were determined to reflect all Larsor’s positive attributes on the product.

In 2009, we started our local production of Larsor Seasoning Powder and took the 3 variants of Chicken, Fish and Tomato Seasonings to the market. We did that with so much energy, publications, TV adverts, market storm and distribution of free samples. The market was agog. Larsor became an instant hit. We struggled to meet demand.

Few weeks after the introduction, we woke to the shocking news that Larsor Seasonings in the market have congealed or showing sign of congealing. The sales stood still. The dream crashed.

We commenced an immediate robust recall of Larsor from the market and reached out to our partners in India to help us find out the reason for the unforeseen defect. It was also a shocking development to them. They went to work and picked development samples in their lab. Miraculously the samples in India are still intact. This shifted the focus of identifying the problem to our production process and handling.

After series of troubleshooting, we found out that Larsor was produced under a high humidity environment, which is a natural ambience within the South East and South-South part of the country. It, therefore, absorbed moisture during production and started congealing after few weeks in the market.

Anambra State, as part of South East, has high humidity except during harmattan, and therefore, not good for the production of hygroscopic products without humidity control of the production hall. This means that to produce hygroscopic products, you have to control the humidity of the production hall to ensure that the end product is dried and free-flowing before packaging.

To understand the effect of humidity on hygroscopic products, recall few times that you have failed to close a tin or sachet of beverages like Ovaltine or Bournvita. They will absorb humidity and congeal within hours or days. This does not mean that the beverage has gone bad, but it will require applied disintegration to get it to the state where you can still use it or in the alternative, use hot water to dissolve the lump. Another example is that when you keep Chocolate exposed, it will melt and become sticky because of the effect of humidity.

It took the installation of industrial air conditioning and dehumidifier systems in our production halls to get Larsor stable and free-flowing over the years without experiencing congealing and lumps again. But it also took several years to get the market to give us the benefit of doubt that not only is Larsor no longer congealing but is still one of the best seasoning powder to be produced in Nigeria by Nigerians.

Through the challenges of producing Larsor Seasonings, Tiger Foods has developed competence in savoury food ingredient solutions and applications. Our portfolio contains spice blends, seasonings, compound flavours, functional ingredients, savoury flavours, top notes either as a powder or liquid blends. These core competencies are applied on a range of products for almost all conceivable applications such as culinary snacks, instant dishes, convenience food, mayonnaise, stew mix and other sauces as well as proprietary blends for B2B customers.

Through the challenges posed by the production of Larsor seasonings, we deliberately created a purposeful work culture under the umbrella of Total Quality Management (TQM), wherein ISO 9001:2000, HACCP, GMP standards are adhered to and certified.

Today, we work closely with a lot of companies across the country to understand their brief, present a product (if available off-the-shelf), collect the feedback, modify/alter the recipe based on the feedback and offer a new sample. This process repeats itself until we come up with a product fully meeting the customer expectation. By so doing, we have created a database of hundreds of recipes for varied applications.

The journey of Larsor Seasoning is best described in 2 Corinthians 12:7, which said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness”.