Case Studies

The family behind it is a great Australian success story. With such substantial produce production, the company faced a challenge in utilising non-premium quality and end-of-season fruit and finding a way to maximise returns over the entire growing season.

The owners identified that freeze drying this fruit would be the best way to increase revenues and margins. These products would be marketed:

• To wholesalers, for sale to consumers and processors for incorporation into their product,
• To retail distributors,
• Online, direct to consumers.

Gibsons was asked to develop strategic, business and feasibility plans to advance the new product line.

The feasibility planning process researched local and international markets to establish potential demand for the freeze-dried products, and how to stand out in these markets. Freeze-drying is ideal for producing healthy, additive-free products for gourmet food producers and for delicious snacks.

Three stages of bringing the product to market were identified:

Stage 1: Low Capital Investment

This stage involved an intensive research and design phase to develop a name, brand identity and packaging for the product. Gibsons hand-picked a team to complete this phase including branding, food product commercialisation and packaging specialists.

The results of this research project were extremely important as they would shape the entire marketing and sales approach and provide maximum surety ahead of significant capital investment in a new venture. We sought to gain a firmer base of certainty for our client around:

• Distributor needs re: product positioning, packaging, merchandising, Point of Sale materials, shelf financials etc.
• Target consumer motivations/behaviours, especially which competitive products they buy and what influences their decisions.
• Why they would choose our client’s product over others as a first-time buyer, and where would they expect to find it in the supermarket? (Snacks, Healthy Snacks, Bakery)
• “Goodness” benefits, retail/online experience, taste, packaging
• In store research (Q&A, behaviour tracking etc.)
• What “journey” are they on when they are open to trying our client’s product? Is it a health journey, a refreshment journey or something else?
• In light of the above, are there additional, effective channels to market we could discover through additional research?
• Tone of voice and brand personality we should use in communicating with prospective customers.

Stage 2: Capital Investment

In this stage the business would expand and convert its premises and install new freeze-drying capacity as well as all of the pre and post processing equipment such as infrastructure to package, store and ship the product. This stage also included the development of a robust marketing plan to promote the product nationally through all relevant channels in a staged rollout.

Stage 3: Full Production

Full production capacity will be brought on stream as the sales demand grows. At this stage it would also be likely that the business would be capable of handling other fruits, herbs or foods both to be sold under its own brand and for other processors. In this stage, Marketing will be ramped up substantially to drive sales growth and provide return on the substantial infrastructure investment.

Overall, this project is a great example of the 360 degree scope and breadth of skill that the Gibsons team can provide to our clients, across the pillars of Strategy, People, Marketing, Process and Profit to achieve the right result.