Softly, softly on selling easy spread

Press, 31 May 1986, Page 2

Softly, softly on selling easy spread

PA Wellington Consumers have become unwitting guinea pigs in a Dairy Board experiment so secret that even the code name is confidential.

The board has begun marketing soft butter — pure, creamy butter which can be taken from the refrigerator and spread directly on breakfast toast without first having to take a blowtorch to it, or melt it over a boiling kettle.

Two tonnes of this magical substance, produced under great secrecy in the Tui dairy factory at Pahiatua, has been spread round supermarkets in Wellington to test consumer reaction. The Tui factory manager, Mr Malcolm Pettman, said the production run was done under a code name, which was secret

He said that the board,

through the marketing arm, Buttermark, was experimenting with producing butter as soft as margarine. “We have been working on this for years and we are getting closer, but we are not there yet and the processing is still far too expensive,” Mr Pettman said.

Tui’s two-tonne experimental batch had been put on the market unannounced to see whether consumers would notice the difference. They have.

A Dairy Board spokesman, Mr Neville Martin, says he has had several calls from curious consumers wanting to buy more. And that's the catch. The project is so secret there is only one way to find out who ...are the guinea pigs — take the butter out of the fridge and try spreading it on a slice of bread.