Discussing Innovation with Tropical Heat, the Leading Manufacturer of Spices and Snacks Made in Kenya

Sawan Shah, CEO at Tropical Heat Group, gives an overview of the company and discusses innovation and recent developments. Tropical Heat was established in 1973 as a small ethnic snack cottage industry and is now one of the leading manufacturers of spices and snacks made in Kenya.

“We have different levels of categories. Broadly split, we would categorize ourselves as spices and seasonings as one category, and snack foods as a second category. We now have breakfast cereals as a third category, and healthy snacking as a fourth category. Within each, we have subcategories. In the snacking pillar, we have potato crisps, extruded snacks, peanuts, and ethnic snacks. In seasonings and spices we have pure spices, marsalas, herbs, and salts. We call them the two fingers of our business, snacks and spices, and we are trying to add third, fourth and fifth fingers to the business to leverage the facilities we already have in terms of distribution, marketing, etc.”, says Sawan Shah.

“The main innovation we are focused on is a product called rice cakes. They are basically pressed, so they are not a fried product within which there is a whole range of flavors. Brown rice, as an example, has no artificial ingredients, it uses brown instead of white rice. Someone can have them as a snack when they go to the gym or to work and it fills them up without having too many calories. We have a similar innovation called chocolate rice cakes. Whereas a typical chocolate bar might have 500 calories, this one has 80 calories but still tastes like a chocolate. We are trying to bridge that gap. We are not saying that it is a complete purely healthy product which is only nutritious. We are trying to create a niche between healthy and tasty. There are a whole bunch of new innovations which are a work in progress in that range including muesli, cereal bars, protein snacks, etc.”, he adds.

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