Joint venture sees Australian food headed for Asian childcare centres

Australia’s Beston Global Food Company (BFC) has entered into a joint venture with Singapore-based MindChamps Holdings to provide foods to preschool children in 35 early childcare centres in Singapore and the Philippines.

MindChamps currently supplies 6000 meals each school day to the children in its childcare centres. While the initial focus of the joint venture will be on the centres in Singapore and Manila, the intention is to roll out the initiative to other countries as MindChamps expands across Asia and into the Middle East.

BFC exports premium seafood, dairy, meat and health nutrition products to China, Japan, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

The South Australian company’s ‘closed supply chain’ model means it owns all its farms and processing facilities, and controls marketing and distribution.

BFC Chairman Roger Sexton said the purpose of the Beston MindChamps Kids Nutrition joint venture was to provide fresh and nutritious eating options for young children and to educate them about the need to make healthy food choices.

“The program, along with a number of the foods for MindChamps, has been designed by our in-house dietician and the food technicians in our various BFC operating businesses,” Dr Sexton said.

“The foods are produced from carefully selected and evaluated ingredients after taking into account a range of nutritional and other factors such as artificial food preservatives, sustainability of seafood, animal welfare, antibiotics in meat and pesticides in vegetables.”

The joint venture will operate as a special purpose company in Singapore with 50% of the shares held each by BFC and MindChamps Holdings.