Africa's TDC adopts AKA Foods' AI-ready R&D platform to future-fit product development
Technology Driven Concepts (TDC), one of Africa's most advanced ingredient solutions and application development companies, has signed a multi-year agreement to adopt AKA Foods' AI-ready R&D and knowledge platform, AKA Studio. The move aims to strengthen customer responsiveness, speed up cross-category innovation, and sharpen decision making.
The partnership follows a hands-on design collaboration where TDC helped shape and test the system against real development challenges. AKA Studio consolidated formulations, experiments, sensory learnings, costing insights, and tacit know-how into a single, structured workspace built for how food developers actually work.
Why this matters for product developers
- Single source of truth for formulations, trials, and sensory data cuts duplication and rework.
- Faster retrieval of past learnings enables quicker briefs-to-concept cycles and stronger customer responses.
- Structured data creates the foundation for food-specific AI as capabilities mature.
- Confidential projects remain siloed in a private cloud environment.
What TDC said
Chris Botha, R&D Director at TDC: "AKA Studio gives our developers something we have never had before - the ability to see and use all of our knowledge in one place. It strengthens how we respond to customers, how we innovate across categories, and how we make decisions."
"With its ability to centralise years of development knowledge in a structured system that will support food-specific AI as it becomes available, AKA Studio helps future-fit TDC for the next decade of product development. Our teams will be able to retrieve relevant past work instantly, reduce duplication, and deliver stronger customer responses with greater confidence."
Saul Abrahams, VP of Business Development, AKA Foods: "Food companies are under pressure to innovate faster, respond to shifting customer needs, and control rising input costs. TDC helped shape the system, tested it against real R&D challenges, and proved its value in day-to-day work. This partnership confirms the importance of strong digital foundations so companies can benefit fully from emerging AI capabilities."
How AKA Studio differs from generic tools
- Understands food R&D context: formulations, processes, sensory outcomes, cost drivers, and historical project patterns.
- Guides decision-making with structured insights instead of scattered files and unstructured history.
- Private, fully siloed cloud setup to maintain confidentiality across customers and categories.
Practical checklist: make your R&D "AI-ready"
- Unify data: centralise formulations, trial notes, panel results, supplier specs, and cost versions in one system.
- Standardise metadata: agree on naming, versioning, and required fields (ingredient IDs, process steps, batch size, sensory scale).
- Create taxonomies: categories, claims, processing methods, and region-specific regs for smarter search and reuse.
- Capture tacit knowledge: log "why we chose X" decisions and edge cases alongside each formulation.
- Secure access: silo customer projects and define clear roles (R&D, QA, procurement, commercial).
- Automate audits: track changes, approvals, and cost impacts by version so learnings don't get lost.
Metrics to track from day one
- Brief-to-first-prototype lead time.
- Iteration count per project and time between iterations.
- Reuse rate of prior formulations or processes.
- % of projects with complete sensory and cost data attached.
- Duplicate work avoided (e.g., similar trials identified early).
90-day rollout plan (simple and effective)
- Days 0-30: Inventory current data, define metadata and taxonomy, choose 2-3 pilot categories.
- Days 31-60: Migrate historical work for pilots, set access rules, train teams on daily workflows.
- Days 61-90: Track metrics, close gaps, expand to more categories, and formalise governance.
About the companies
AKA Foods builds a platform that combines AI with real sensory data to accelerate R&D across taste, texture, and aroma. It integrates each company's tacit knowledge and disparate data sources into a private, secure system to shorten development cycles, cut costs, and deliver products consumers want. Winner of the 2025 Fi Europe Future Foodtech Innovation Award. Learn more about the event at Fi Europe.
Technology Driven Concepts (TDC) is a leading food innovation and customised ingredient solutions provider serving manufacturers and retailers across Africa. Headquartered in Durbanville with certified production facilities in Cape Town and Johannesburg, TDC's specialist teams span dairy, plant-based, sauces, beverages, bakery, and ingredient systems from concept to commercialisation.
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