As the Director of Foodpath, Nicola Brook brings a wealth of experience to this business. She graduated with Distinction in Microbiology from University of the Witwatersrand in 1984. Her vast experience in the South African food industry includes positions at Unilever, Dragoco, Maccallum & Associates, Orley Foods and Von Holy Consulting. At Unilever she was part of their Management Development programme and was promoted to technical management positions at a young age. She has cross functional experience in Technical, Marketing and Sales management positions and across a wide range of industry sectors namely, margarine, bakery, flavours, commodity ingredients, chocolate as well as ice cream and dairy.
Training
Training is something Nicola Brook has carried out for subordinates for many years in various laboratories, sales and administration functions. This led to a position as Operations Manager for Von Holy Consulting in 2009. She then spent 3 years as a popular training facilitator for them. Von Holy Consulting had a long standing track record of delivering superior training in the field of food safety. Nicola was visiting and training at factories across the spectrum of the South African food, beverage, packaging and distribution industries.
Nicola’s strengths include communication and understanding at all levels from shop floor to executives. She is adaptable to the circumstances and able to think broadly given the scope of her past experiences. Her language skills are utilised in preparing presentations and manuals to fit the target audience whether that is a director who needs convincing or a semi-skilled individual who needs coaching or mentoring. Nicola is a qualified Assessor to conduct outcomes based assessments. Different assessments are created as required as auditors are now particularly interested in the efficacy of training undertaken.
Foodpath
Foodpath opened in October 2012 to continue to offer credible training to the wider food industry. The company has added numerous different courses over the years to meet specific customer requests and market needs. Consulting is another service offered to accelerate a customer’s ability to meet their food safety objectives. To this end Nicola qualified as a Food Safety Management Systems Lead Auditor.
Foodpath is an independent company and not part of any large organization. Foodpath is classified as an Exempt Micro Enterprise in terms of BEE scorecards, which means an automatic Level 4 status. Foodpath can undertake assignments throughout South Africa and neighbouring countries.
Foodpath Vision : Pathway to Safe Food
The dots in the logo represent the stepping stones along a path, be that of a career or learning about food safety. They lead into the red path which is lined with both a strawberry and a red pepper representing the sweet and savoury sectors of the food industry. The strawberry also represents Spring and new beginnings so too does the colour green. Green also corresponds with safety as in green traffic lights or go signs. Green symbolises growth and harmony too. Red is associated with fire, energy, passion and power or leadership. Red is used in life and business for high visibility, notably stop signs, Coca Cola logo as well as McDonald’s. Foodpath’s vision is to combine the elements of growth with passion for food safety and education of all. Your pathway to safe food