N.Z. Dairy Board plans to sell wider range in U.K.

Press, 20 April 1982, Page 24

N.Z. Dairy Board plans to sell wider range in U.K.

By

KEN COATES

in London

Dutch' cream, put into German aerosol cans by a Belgian company, will be marketed throughout Britain by New Zealand’s dairy products company, Anchor Foods, Ltd.

This is the first big step in a policy to broaden the base of the New Zealand Dairy Board's marketing organisation and sell more products. Anchor, which has built a high reputation packaging, distributing, and marketing butter and cheesd in Britain, will spend more than $1,150,000 promoting what is a new product for the United Kingdom.

The company is confident that sales will build up. to an annual five million cans in Britain. The product already sells to the tune of eight million cans in West Germany, also in other European countries, and is popular in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.

The reason why New Zealand cream is not being used for the venture is that E.E.C.-imposed tariffs would make the cost uneconomic.

The search for a greater variety of products, not necessarily from 'New Zealand, has come against a background of declining dairy exports to Britain from the 1960s,.when New Zealand sent 75,000 tonnes of cheese and 170,000 tonnes of butter.'

The Dairy Board realised it could capitalise on its assets of a full consumer

packaging, distribution, and marketing organisation and a strong brand name. While Anchor butter still has the greatest share of the market at 25 per cent — Britain’s Country Life, at 16 per cent is its nearest rival — the quote allowed into the United Kingdom has shrunk to 92,000 tonnes. Research shows that the Anchor parchment-wrapped butter packs have a reputation with consumers for high quality and freshness. . The Anchor brand will be used for the “real dairy cream in a can” which will be on sale in British shops soon. Anchor’s managing director, Mr Murray Gough, has no doubts about the quality of the Dutch cream canned at the Debic Company’s plant in Leuven, Belgium, being to the New Zealand company’s quality standards.

"We simply could not afford to put a product on the market which was not in line with Anchor’s image,” he said. The small, highly efficient Belgian company has steadily expanded canned cream sales in Europe over the last two or three years, and was about to enter the British market when Anchor negotiated a supply agreement. Mr Gough is reluctant to predict future profits from the venture, but is optimistic that the product, new to British housewives, will catch on. Initially, it will have the advantage of no significant competition. A television advertising campaign will be mounted in June and July to coincide with the fruit season, and there will be strong persua-

, sion to use the thick cream with strawberries and raspberries particularly. The can of 1% pints of whipped cream will retail at between $2.40 and $2.50 compared with about $l.BO for a pack of “double cream.” The canned cream will keep for up to three months in refrigeration. It will be clearly marked "Product of Belgium,” but Mr Gough says the Anchor brand, though associated with New Zealand butter, is equally synonymous with quality and freshness. Purchase research trials showed that 56 per cent of shoppers bought the product and returned for more. This is the first of a number of additional products Anchor plans to distribute and market.