Global plant-based ingredients provider Roquette has signed an agreement with ingredients distributor Azelis.

Roquette Global Distribution Management head Laurent Cousin said: “Roquette is committed to providing its customers with good, reliable plant-based ingredients and vegetal proteins, as well as an excellent level of service, and has strong growth ambitions to better serve its customers in food, nutrition and health markets worldwide.

“Thus, one of the main criteria for the distributor selecion was Azelis’ ability to demonstrate how we would improve growth, profitability and productivity with them. Transparency, technical capabilities and good market presence also played a significant role.”

Azelis will distribute Roquette’s products in Germany, Austria and Nordics / Baltics.

The agreement will also cover south Italy, Russia, Ukraine, and other Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) from 1 January.

Azelis EMEA Strategy and Business Development director Evy Hellinckx said: “We are very excited about this new partnership for two reasons. Firstly, it perfectly complements our current portfolio in food and health, strengthening our position in Europe. Secondly, it is a wonderful recognition of our technical capabilities, the quality of our sales force and our CSR efforts.”

The distribution company runs 55 application laboratories, 16 of which are dedicated to local food and health markets in Belgium, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, India, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Poland, Romania, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and the UK.