Companies carve out new niche products

SUPERVALU IRISH FOOD PRODUCERS AWARDS 2010:THE SUPERVALU Irish Food Producers Awards 2010, in association with The Irish Timesand Enterprise Ireland, are designed to recognise excellence, quality and innovation within the food and beverage sector in Ireland.

The overall winner will be awarded the title of the SuperValu Irish Food Producer of the Year. In addition, awards will be made in the following categories:

Quality Commitment; Innovation; Local Producers; Best Newcomer; Best Fresh Produce and People’s Choice Award.

Below are the three shortlisted candidates in the Local Producers and Innovation categories.

The finalists in the remaining categories will be profiled in The Irish Timesover the coming weeks.

SOME OFthe country's best-known indigenous food companies have been shortlisted in the innovation category of the Supervalu local foods award.

The judges were looking for producers “who have demonstrated an awareness that innovation is a key competitive differentiator and thus crucial to business success”.

One of the successful candidates is a company that has succeeded in merging tradition and innovation throughout its 200- year history. Flahavan’s is one of Ireland’s best-known brands.

Founded in the 1790s, it was incorporated as a limited company in 1940. The sixth-generation family business continues to operate from Kilmacthomas, Co Waterford, where it has its oat mill.

The company, which has 65 per cent of the hot oats cereal market, sources its oats locally from a registered panel of growers. It employs 52 people.

Turnover at the company has grown in recent years, with the increase in popularity of porridge among consumers. As well as being the market leader in the traditional porridge oats market, in 2005 the company launched a new product, “Quick Oats”. This microwaveable porridge was one of the first Irish-produced quick oats range on the market.

Marketed at both families and office workers, the aim of the range was to introduce porridge as a “convenience” food, one that could be prepared with minimal time, which, it was hoped, would attract new customers.

Quality Green Producers Limited is a producers’ organisation that was established in 2005, when eight growers from the east came together and decided to pool their resources.

Eight equal partners now head the business, which is based in Dublin, Waterford, Wexford and Louth. The main products are tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers. The company employs approximately 70 staff and has a turnover of €8 million.

The products for which the group has been nominated for the innovation category of the Supervalu awards are two specific brands of tomatoes.

In 2006 one of the members noticed that two types of imported tomatoes – sunstream and piccolo – were becoming more prevalent on Irish supermarket shelves.

“It was clear there was a market for these varieties, so we looked at the possibility of producing them domestically,” says Matt Wallace, chairman of Quality Green.

The tomatoes, which Wallace says have a “noticeably better flavour” than other tomatoes, were being imported from the Netherlands and Italy. Quality Green broke new ground when it began producing these varieties in Ireland.

After producing a limited supply of the new product in 2006, the trial proved a commercial success and the company scaled up production in Grantstown, Co Waterford, and Rathbeale, Swords, Co Dublin. Today it supplies some of the country’s main supermarkets, including Musgraves, with the product.

Carton Brothers Ltd is an eighth-generation family business, and one of the biggest poultry producers in the county.

Established in 1775 by the Carton family, the company is now run by Vincent and Justin Carton. At 225 years, it is one of the oldest companies in Ireland and it employs about 600 people in 26 counties.

The company’s Supervalu/ Centra Garlic Part Bone Chicken Breast has been nominated for the innovation award.

The company launched this home-made chicken Kiev product in January 2010 after conducting market research and focus groups, which found that customers needed a quick “meal-time” product that could be prepared easily and quickly at home.

The product, which is produced in Shercock, Co Cavan, uses 100 per cent Irish chicken. The chicken is fed by the company’s “crunch feed”, which has been developed at its dedicated poultry-only feed mill – something that the company says is crucial in light of recent livestock and poultry scandals stemming from issues to do with animal feed.

Although its early days for the product, sales represent 16 per cent of the company’s value-added chicken business.