Africa-based, TDC, signs multi-year agreement to adopt AKA Studio

Advanced AI-ready platform strengthens ability to respond to customer`s, improves innovation across categories and enhances decision making, says TDC

Amstelveen, Netherlands, December 3^rd  2025 – AKA Foods B.V. has announced that Technology Driven Concepts (TDC), one of Africa’s most advanced ingredient solutions and application development companies, has signed a multi-year agreement to adopt its innovative and secure AI-ready platform for food R&D and knowledge consolidation, AKA Studio. The award-winning platform enables food companies to create, optimise, and launch products much faster, smarter, and more affordably and was selected by TDC to meet its objectives for improved customer responsiveness, innovation across categories and decision making.

The partnership with TDC, which serves leading CPGs, retailers and a global fast food restaurant chain, makes it one of the first companies globally to formalise a long-term strategy for AI-enabled product development. The agreement also follows a close collaboration, in which TDC acted as an early design partner for AKA Studio. Through this process, AKA Studio proved it could unify formulations, experiments, sensory learnings, costing insights, and tacit product knowledge into a single, structured environment designed for the way food developers actually work.

A major validation for the future of AI in food R&D

As Chris Botha, R&D Director at TDC explains, his company’s adoption of AKA Studio signals a shift toward modernised, data-driven product development:

“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,” he says.

“Essentially, our teams will be able to retrieve relevant past work instantly, reduce duplication, and deliver stronger customer responses with greater confidence. This gives TDC a solid foundation to activate AI capabilities as they mature within the platform,” adds Botha.

AKA Studio differs from generic tools by understanding the full context of food development. It organizes formulations, processes, sensory outcomes, cost drivers, and historical project patterns in a unified environment. The system is designed to guide developers with insights that accelerate decision-making while maintaining confidentiality in a fully siloed, private cloud environment.

“Food companies are under pressure to innovate faster, respond to shifting customer needs, and control rising input costs. Yet most R&D teams still rely on scattered spreadsheets, isolated formulation files, and unstructured project histories that slow down decision-making and lead to repeated work,” says Saul Abrahams, VP of Business Development, AKA Foods.

“TDC is a fast-moving, multi-category innovator, and their commitment is a powerful validation of what AKA Studio is built to do. They helped shape the system, they tested it against real R&D challenges, and they proved its value in day-to-day work. This partnership confirms the importance of building strong digital foundations so companies can benefit fully from emerging AI capabilities. Such technologies also serve South Africa as the leader in food science and technology in Africa,” concludes Abrahams.

*Winner of the 2025 Fi Europe Future Foodtech Innovation Award