7.4 Consumer products: new products and a new platform in variety sauces

For a large food manufacturer with an established market and reputation, a continuing line of new products is a vital dynamic element in strategy for growth and the future. Wattie Industries had been built up over about 30 years as the largest food processing company in New Zealand with also a substantial export business. It had a varied line of products including canned and frozen lines, and a major market share with a solid, quality, customer base. But its success and size then attracted various manipulations and reorganisations, over quite some years, and ultimately the international US company, H.J. Heinz, bought it. Today trading under the name Heinz Wattie's Limited it has become an important part of their international production resource with particular emphasis, outside of its local market, on Australia and Japan.

The activity in Hastings, New Zealand, located over three sites, employs about 1800 people at peak and for example annually produces about 40,000 tonnes of canned soups, baked beans and spaghetti for Heinz, Australia, and about 200,000 tonnes totally. It operates the largest hydrostatic cooker in the world, and the current canned food production rate is about half a billion units per year. A current major growth driver is the Japanese market; about NZ$100 million has been spent on the plant in the last five years, much of it on sorting and handling equipment but also on up-to-date processing facilities. They have a product development team on site of over 40. The scene is of a large production unit of a large multinational company looking for new consumer food products on selected international markets.

The new product chosen was a line of speciality, variety sauces, and an outline of the PD Process that was used is shown in Table 7.5.


Table 7.5 Activities in sauce PD Process

Product brief: 7 July 1997 Product strategy - inception of initial concept - preliminary product development work and planning - formulation of product development brief and project plan. Decision: Acceptance to proceed as a Project by Product Manager Product design: 9 July 1997 to 1 October 1997 Product design and process development - preliminary surveys and ball park costings - recipe formation, assessment and refinement - laboratory and ingredient and engineering assessment and experimentation - preliminary packaging - label information - cooking procedures - quality assessment and control procedures - to a full product and process specification. Decision: Assessment and approval of plant related expenditures and project continuation. Factory trials: 25 September 1997 Finished product assessment: 29 September 1997 Product commercialisation - factory trials - feedback and attention to shortcomings and problems - trial samples prepared and checked - factory operational planning - marketing planning - sales forecasts - final costings. Decision: Acceptance of formal specifications and Approval to proceed to launch, by Senior Management. Production: Started 22, 23, 24 October 1997 Launch approval: 22 October 1997 Launch: November 1997 Product launch and evaluation - factory production - presentation to sales and trade - marketing of products. Review and continuation - feedback from sales, marketing, retailers - review of lines - withdrawal of less successful items and planning of additional items on the platform - further development and launches.