[en] Full text: Expanding coverage for the 35 million children in the world suffering from Moderate Acute Malnutrition (MAM) will require sustainably scaling up regional procurement of lipid-based RUSF products. Momentum is now building to achieve this aim through ten local ready-to-use food (RUF) producers in the PlumpyField Network, which was established by the French company Nutriset in 2005. These independently-owned factories, located in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean, currently produce one-third of the world’s RUF supply. Overcoming substantial obstacles, they have achieved the same high quality standards of producers in Europe and the U.S., with increasingly competitive pricing. Being part of a mutually supportive and interactive network of RUF producers from around the world provides unique learning and partnership opportunities, from sharing insights on peanut supply chain development, increasingly complex quality challenges, to pooled procurement. This network system has been instrumental to the success of local production for the members of the PlumpyField Network. Historically, local producers achieving economies of scale and reliable local and international supply chains (i.e. for peanuts, oil, sugar, milk etc.) takes several years, making the cost of locally-procured products more expensive in the short term. However, there are numerous positive outcomes and externalities that cannot be ignored, such as decreased lead times (especially crucial to reach children with acute malnutrition), lower shipping costs, economic development, and maturation of the food processing and microbiological laboratory sectors. UNICEF and WFP have become leaders in local and regional procurement as they continually optimize their strategies to best meet global needs. Local production is often an important stimulant of public-private partnerships, including procurement of RUF by local governments for government-run acute malnutrition programs, furthering nutritional autonomy. Ms. Hilina Belete, Deputy General Manager of Hilina Enriched Foods in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, joins the panel as a representative of the PlumpyField Network. Hilina Enriched Foods was established in 1998 to produce food products, such as vitamin A enriched sugar and iodized salt, specifically designed to combat malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies in Ethiopia. In 2006, with political support from the Government of Ethiopia, technical support from Nutriset, and programmatic support from UNICEF, their production capabilities were expanded to include RUTF. Since that time, production capacity has expanded to include RUSF, and Hilina Enriched Foods now has a production capacity of 12,000 MT per year. Ms. Hilina Belete will be sharing both the successes and a wide range of challenges that arise from making RUF in a developing economy. Some topics that will be discussed include: local business environment, customer demand, finances, factory set up and technology transfer, partnerships, raw material supply chains, research and development, quality, production and scale-up for emergency demand, and local infrastructure and supply chain. The experiences of PlumpyField members and their programming partners offer important insights for the future of RUSF production for treating MAM. (author)