#Fonterra whipping up a growth recipe

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Fonterra’s culinary and whipping cream has gone from the lab to shipping 20,000 tonnes a year.
Its reputation has spread like wildfire online among international chefs.
The company’s cooking cream doesn’t split and is 100 per cent natural. It saves time in the kitchen as it is already reduced, and is consistent and reliable, which can help if a chef is inexperienced.
In effect, Fonterra has made a fragile product far more robust and more suitable for use in the hectic world of the commercial kitchen.
It is products such as these, and a fresh approach to sales, that are driving growth in what chief executive Theo Spierings describes as Fonterra’s «unpolished jewel», its food services business.
Global director of Fonterra Foodservices Rene Dedoncker says the $1 billion business has been built over the past five years to target out-of-home consumption. And, with some of Fonterra’s retail brands coming under pressure as a result of supermarket wars, it is, along with surging global milk powder demand, a real bright spot.
«We specialise in solving the problems chefs and cooks have,» Dedoncker explains. «Dairy is a high-usage item in most kitchens.»
Dedoncker says the food services business doesn’t do «best price wins», but rather works on what makes chefs tick, and solves their problems. That has seen the size of the business double and deliver ongoing growth of 10 per cent a year by volume.
But it is perhaps the sales approach that is really cementing Fonterra’s place in global kitchens. That effort is led by 25 qualified chefs, hired to go into those kitchens and cook dishes to demonstrate the products, and to train the broader sales force.
In effect, sales is about chefs talking to their peers, and going around the procurement manager to the people who really decide what gets into the kitchen, and what does not.
But there is another bonus: Those chefs get to talk to and know the customer, understand their issues and challenges, and help Fonterra design more new products to help address those problems.
«Chefs like talking to chefs,» Dedoncker says. The stuff that keeps chefs awake at night aren’t directly about «the price of cheese» but issues such as staffing, training, cutting wastage and ensuring consistency.
«We take those insights and help chefs create a menu that minimises waste, but is exciting for customers.»
Globally, there is talk of a sea-change in sales technique, away from the old mode of solution selling – fixing the customers’ problems with a product or service – to what is called «insight selling». Insight selling requires the kind of deep knowledge and understanding of the industry that Fonterra’s sales force can deliver – and the creation of products the customer may never even have thought about.
In short, the deep market insights the food services group can provide are helping drive the creation of value added products and R&D. Products such as Fonterra’s new creams help deliver that consistency. They are more «bulletproof», Dedoncker says.
And the success of those products has spurred further investment. «It’s one example. Take something relatively simple, give it a twist, and produce something different and unique,» Dedoncker says.
When Fonterra announced a $100 million-plus investment in a new plant at Waitoa, it was to help meet demand for such new products.
To win that kind of support, the food services division had to prove that its approach was repeatable and sustainable in multiple markets. That has now been accepted and food services is one of Spierings’ seven strategic growth paths, based around Fonterra delivering «value, volume and velocity».
Fonterra also has an advantage against its multinational competitors in having a full basket of products. Many can’t fulfil demand across a full range of dairy categories, Dedoncker says. As well as creams, it includes butters, and a wide range of cheeses, including mozarella, ghee, milk and cream cheese. Fonterra is producing 20,000 metric tonnes of cream cheese at Te Rapa, for instance, all for food services.
While the US dairy market remains restrictive, the food services business launched into the US two-and-a-half years ago, and has carved out a market at the upper end of the full service restaurant niche in Chicago. That is now being extended to New York and Philadelphia. Of the 12 products being offered there, 11 are sourced from New Zealand, and one in the US.
The food services business deals with several sales channels, full service restaurants, quick service restaurants and other channels, such as bakeries.
 
Source: Stuff

Mirá También

Así lo expresó Domingo Possetto, secretario de la seccional Rafaela, quien además, afirmó que a los productores «habitualmente los ignoran los gobiernos». Además, reconoció la labor de los empresarios de las firmas locales y aseguró que están «esperanzados» con la negociación entre SanCor y Adecoagro.

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