MEXICO CITY — Grupo Bimbo SAB de CV plans to expand the global outreach of its Craft Academy program, according to the company’s annual report for 2023 titled “Behind our actions.”

Bimbo first founded Craft Academy in 2019 as a “maintenance school” at the Toluca and Mexico City facilities. The program has since grown to include the company’s Marinela México brand and Bimbo Norte subsidiary with its new goal to make knowledge and experience gathered from Grupo Bimbo more accessible. As of 2023, Craft Academy had 4,221 trained associates and had accumulated 235,857 total training hours. In March of that same year, Grupo Bimbo opened facilities for Craft Academy at the Tía Rosa production plant in Toluca. The program also offers digital courses that are “adaptable for new generations,” Grupo Bimbo said.

Another important goal of Craft Academy is to organize and provide access to several forms of information, including data from courses, scientific sources and expertise consulted from the company’s “most experienced associates,” Grupo Bimbo said. The company said it plans to achieve this goal with help of pedagogical (teaching) specialists and a team of designers and animators.

“Within our production lines, we rely on experts who have been in the company for over 30 years,” Grupo Bimbo said. “Through their accumulated experience, they offer an invaluable guide of technical knowledge and practical experience, including those ‘unwritten rules’ that can only be acquired over time. Aware of the importance to preserve something invaluable, we sought to find an effective way to collect and transmit this knowledge to new generations in a creative, easy, and standardized way.”

In 2024, Grupo Bimbo said its goal is to translate the program’s content in English to make training accessible in all countries of operations, with the first English course “Baking, science and technology” being held at the Tía Rosa facilities sometime this year. Grupo Bimbo also intends to open laboratories in other countries and work with different organizations, which would not only allow the company to increase its global reach but also reduce costs and facilitate access to training in all countries it has a presence in.