West African Expansion for MANE

The MANE Group has been doing business in West Africa for at least 50 years. The South African local branch has been in existence since 2001. Four years ago the company set up a subsidiary in Lagos, Nigeria and has decided to reinforce its West African footprint by opening up a creative Centre in Accra, GHANA.
‘The Nigeria operation services just Nigeria,’ explains Olivier Cebe, Director Fragrance Africa. ‘We chose Ghana for many reasons; it is the most stable country in West Africa and many multinationals have a presence there, including L’Oreal, Unilever and Nestlé. Being based in the region, we are better able to understand the needs of the local clients and consumers. The office in Ghana will act as a commercial and creation hub for West African countries like Nigeria, Côte d'Ivoire, Togo, Senegal just to name a few.
MANE has been a family-owned business for 142 years and, with the opening of the Ghana branch, has 37 R&D centres around the world. Olivier Cebe says ‘all products must be well-suited to specific local markets’. At the centre in Accra, V.MANE Fils Ghana Ltd combines the resources of a Fragrance Team (sales, perfumer, evaluator, marketing, compounding and application laboratories) reporting to South Africa, and those of a Flavour Team (sales, technician for sweet and savoury laboratories and evaluator) reporting to France. There is no manufacturing plant on the premises. MANE has 21 manufacturing sites worldwide and for this region manufacturing is mainly done in France.