Find out more about the history of NSF International and their presence in sub-Saharan Africa
The NSF journey
In 1944, NSF began as a Foundation in the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health. Today, we are known as NSF International, with corporate headquarters in Ann Arbor, MI, USA, and 62 office and lab locations worldwide.
NSF International is dedicated to being the leading global provider of public health and safety-based risk management solutions while serving the interests of all stakeholders, namely the public, the business community and government agencies. Our mission and focus has always been protecting and improving human health.
NSF Africa was established in 2007 with headquarters in Stellenbosch, South Africa and we currently operate in 15 African countries with a team of more than 40 food safety professionals.
We serve the Agriculture, Food Manufacturing, Packaging and Distribution, Foodservice, and Retail sectors, and our services include Standards development, Testing, Certification, Auditing, Consulting and Training.
Innovation at your fingertips
It is one of our core values to foster innovation and creativity. The commitment to continuously enhance public health and public confidence also drives our focus on innovation. One project that we find particularly exciting is the use of Wearable Technology. In 2017 NSF launched EyeSucceed, a food industry technology company and a recognized Glass Partner. EyeSucceed brings together the power of smart glasses and augmented intelligence to transform how the industry addresses real-world challenges like high labor costs, employee training and consistent execution.
As an NSF International company, EyeSucceed leverages NSF’s 70-plus year expertise in the food industry to provide new training and operational execution solutions. Using smart glasses, EyeSucceed’s smart training and execution services create an interactive, hands-free learning experience for food employees to learn intuitively, directly and interactively with prompts from expertly prepared training sequences. Smart glasses merged with computer learning and artificial intelligence will detect and record when employees deviate from standards while performing work functions, along with immediately initiating corrective actions.
Contributing to global public health
To ensure that our clients are assessed properly against the rigorous Global standards, we demand consistency in the interpretation of the standards. The NSF auditor integrity program is unmatched in the industry. In recent years, we have invested significantly in continuing to strengthen our global integrity program. This program ensures consistency in our systems for auditor hiring, training and calibration in every country we operate.
Taking African food manufacturers to global markets
With a vision of Safe food for consumers everywhere, food industry leaders created the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) in 2000 to find collaborative solutions to collective concerns, notably to reduce food safety risks, audit duplication and costs while building trust throughout the supply chain. The GFSI is composed of the world's leading food safety experts from retail, manufacturing and food service companies, as well as international organisations, governments, academia and service providers to the global food industry.
NSF audits against all the GFSI benchmarked standards, including:
- GLOBALG.A.P.
- BRC
- IFS
- SQF
- FSSC
We have more than 3000 certified clients in Africa that have implemented one of the GFSI standards, allowing them to export their products to any global market.
The GFSI Global Markets Capacity Building Programme was developed for small and/or less developed businesses to continuously improve their food safety programmes to achieve product safety requirements in a phased approach and ultimately gain certification against one of the GFSI recognized schemes. Within this programme, NSF worked with GLOBALG.A.P. and African retailers to develop entry-level standards such as Localg.a.p. for developing farmers.
Our plans for Africa
We are aggressively growing our presence in the rest of Africa. We currently have clients in 15 African countries and auditors strategically based in some of these countries. We are in the process of establishing satellite offices in Kenya, Egypt and Ghana from where we will manage the surrounding developing markets in East, North and West Africa.
Our South African business is growing rapidly. This could be attributed to the growing awareness of local retailers and major food brands of the food safety risk that was sadly illustrated during the tragic Listeriosis outbreak in 2017.
The result is a dramatic increase in our Consulting Technical Services, where we assist brands with crisis response, supply chain management, trading law, recall plan reviews, allergen risk management and our state-of-the-art Quality and Compliance Management Software (TraQtion).
