Sterling Bollman, the head of Advertising and Sponsorship Sales at AOCS, talked with Jorge Montenegro, the Technical Director of CI Sigra based in Bogotá, Columbia. In this conversation, AOCS learned about innovations CI Sigra has developed and what really sets them apart from their competitors. Enjoy our next installment in the Corporate Member Spotlight series and learn more about CI Sigra.
Nice meeting you Jorge and thank you for sitting down with me to do this Spotlight. My first question is a basic, background one. What type of services and products does CI Sigra provide?
Nice to meet you as well and thanks for the opportunity! CI Sigra is a company that, with more than sixty years in the market, offers solutions based on vegetable oils and fats to meet the needs of all its customers in the Bakery, Hospitality, Retail and Industrial industry segments. In addition, it has a top-notch team of Technical Advisors who provide personalized support in the execution of new developments for all our clients.
This strikes me as a field that has a lot of competing companies. What differentiates CI Sigra from these other companies competing in the same space?
For our company, quality is not an added value, but it is the normality that we guarantee in all our products. Customer service is essential for us, seeking to always focus on our developments, responding to the real needs of our customers, accompanying them in their developments, ensuring a timely supply of our product and its functionality at the time of its application.
With so much emphasis on the quality of your work, I can imagine new innovations are important to CI Sigra. What’s one recent innovation that CI Sigra is most proud of?
We recently launched a 100% vegetable-based butter substitute. This allows us to have those unique flavors and textures that the use of butter provides in our client’s applications, but with all the benefits of a 100% plant-based product.
For many companies, the rise of COVID-19 has made 2020 a difficult year. How has the recent pandemic affected your company?
Undoubtedly, the pandemic has affected all economic sectors. We are fortunate to belong to a sector (the Food Sector) that has always had the authorization of the National Government to continue operating in compliance with all biosafety protocols. This has created a new challenge by having to incorporate new work measures to ensure that our employees can carry out their tasks safely, in order to continue to fulfill the supply of our products to each client, with the quality guarantee and functionality that they expect of us.
Continuing off this, what do you foresee being the biggest challenges to CI Sigra moving forward?
Many of our collaborators started working from home because of the pandemic. Getting back to the face-to-face routine after being away for so long may be one of the challenges we face moving forward and in 2021.
Well Jorge, thank you so much for the time you’ve given me today. This series is giving people a chance to learn a little bit more about our corporate members. Before you go, I have one more question. Why is being an AOCS corporate member important to you and CI Sigra?
AOCS is the main source that the players in the fats and oils sector must interact. AOCS membership guarantees a constant networking strengthening exercise that allows us to be updated on the main, scientific news related to our products. In addition to this, it is a fundamental support system that guarantees all our analyses are standardized and aligned, according to the regulations defined by the AOCS.
Thanks for reading. Thank you to Jorge Montenegro and his colleagues at CI Sigra for taking part in our AOCS Corporate Member Spotlight Series. Make sure to visit their website, subscribe to their YouTube page, like them on Facebook and follow them on Instagram! Join us next time to see who we feature next!
Nice to meet you as well and thanks for the opportunity! CI Sigra is a company that, with more than sixty years in the market, offers solutions based on vegetable oils and fats to meet the needs of all its customers in the Bakery, Hospitality, Retail and Industrial industry segments. In addition, it has a top-notch team of Technical Advisors who provide personalized support in the execution of new developments for all our clients.
This strikes me as a field that has a lot of competing companies. What differentiates CI Sigra from these other companies competing in the same space?
For our company, quality is not an added value, but it is the normality that we guarantee in all our products. Customer service is essential for us, seeking to always focus on our developments, responding to the real needs of our customers, accompanying them in their developments, ensuring a timely supply of our product and its functionality at the time of its application.
With so much emphasis on the quality of your work, I can imagine new innovations are important to CI Sigra. What’s one recent innovation that CI Sigra is most proud of?
We recently launched a 100% vegetable-based butter substitute. This allows us to have those unique flavors and textures that the use of butter provides in our client’s applications, but with all the benefits of a 100% plant-based product.
For many companies, the rise of COVID-19 has made 2020 a difficult year. How has the recent pandemic affected your company?
Undoubtedly, the pandemic has affected all economic sectors. We are fortunate to belong to a sector (the Food Sector) that has always had the authorization of the National Government to continue operating in compliance with all biosafety protocols. This has created a new challenge by having to incorporate new work measures to ensure that our employees can carry out their tasks safely, in order to continue to fulfill the supply of our products to each client, with the quality guarantee and functionality that they expect of us.
Continuing off this, what do you foresee being the biggest challenges to CI Sigra moving forward?
Many of our collaborators started working from home because of the pandemic. Getting back to the face-to-face routine after being away for so long may be one of the challenges we face moving forward and in 2021.
Well Jorge, thank you so much for the time you’ve given me today. This series is giving people a chance to learn a little bit more about our corporate members. Before you go, I have one more question. Why is being an AOCS corporate member important to you and CI Sigra?
AOCS is the main source that the players in the fats and oils sector must interact. AOCS membership guarantees a constant networking strengthening exercise that allows us to be updated on the main, scientific news related to our products. In addition to this, it is a fundamental support system that guarantees all our analyses are standardized and aligned, according to the regulations defined by the AOCS.
Thanks for reading. Thank you to Jorge Montenegro and his colleagues at CI Sigra for taking part in our AOCS Corporate Member Spotlight Series. Make sure to visit their website, subscribe to their YouTube page, like them on Facebook and follow them on Instagram! Join us next time to see who we feature next!
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