Florette
Neil Sanderson is leaving the food industry and will be replaced by Floreale Operations Director, Doug Robertson
Florette UK and Ireland managing director Neil Sanderson is leaving the business to pursue a career outside of the food industry and will be replaced by Floreale operations director Doug Robertson.
Sanderson, who has been with Florette for five years, will take up the role of director of the York Minster Fund – a body established in the late 1960s in order to raise money for the great work of restoration when the Central Tower was in danger of collapse.
Robertson has worked across the European fresh produce industry with roles at Asda, Geest and Bakkavor, in operations, procurement and general management.
He joined the vegetable division of Florette parent company Agrial to become general manager of Florette Murcia, following the acquisition of the French and Spanish businesses of Bakkavor. For the last three years he has been operations director for the division.
His replacement will be named in the next few weeks.
“The company wish to thank Neil for his contribution to the company over the last five years,” a statement from Florette said.
“We are also delighted to announce that Doug Robertson will be moving from his role in the Floreale central team as operations director to replace Neil in the role of MD Florette UK and Ireland.”
Sanderson is due to stay with the business during the transition period to help complete a series of projects.
The bagged salad specialist has introduced its new ‘Bags of Insight’ infographic to communicate about consumer buying habits.
Recent studies showing that 37 per cent of all bagged salad is binned at home prompted packaged salad specialist Florette to conduct research into how consumers tend to buy and use the product.
The research convinced Florette to introduce smaller pack sizes in the UK at reduced prices back in April this year in order to help reduce waste, while the company equally invested £6m in sharing this message.
The company has now announced plans to continue this direct communication to consumers with a ‘Bags of Insight’ infographic every few months.
In its first infographic on summer salad trends (see below), Florette highlighted the finding that two bags of Florette are sold every second during the summer months.
Perhaps more surprising, however, is the statistic that 5 per cent of Florette consumers do not “use the salad as an ingredient”.
Salad giant says move is aimed at ‘solving the wastage issue and injecting growth into the leafy prepared salad category.’
Florette has amended its company logo and package design, and is also reducing pack sizes of some of its key products.
Following the results of specially-commissioned consumer insight, the salad specialist said it got to work on a response that would enable it to “solve the wastage issue and inject growth into the leafy prepared salad category.”
After what Florette describes as “intensive qualitative and quantitative research into consumer attitudes, purchase intent and pricing” over a six-month period, the outcome is the creation of a new range blueprint that will see pack sizes and prices change for key SKUs.
The new packs – complete with a refreshed design and a slightly amended Florette logo – also involve a new communication strategy aimed at offering greater clarity on the number of portions within each bag. The firm hopes that this will help consumers buy the right amount of product to meet their needs, therefore reducing in-home wastage.
Managing Director of Florette, Neil Sanderson said: “Replacing ambiguous ‘serving numbers’ with images of salad portions on plates provides a new, clearer indication of how many platefuls, side portions and handfuls of product are contained within each bag.
“These tangible and understandable portion indicators makes it easier for shoppers to judge how much product is in each bag, which informs how much they need to buy to suit their needs.
“In addition, thanks to a packaging re-design, the brand will also be providing shoppers with greater clarity in the way it communicates flavour delivery and recipe inspiration on-pack. This will help shoppers identify and buy what they want, and will motivate shoppers to be more creative with their salad by being better informed about the products they buy.”
He added: “Shoppers are telling us they want to find what they want easily, in order to buy what they need, and then use what they buy. We are responding responsibly to the desire for reduced wastage and making shopping for salads easier by optimising the pack sizes and prices of our key products.
“It is important to emphasise this not about reducing pack size at the same price, but about changing both pack size and price in proportion to meet consumer needs better.
“Live market trials undertaken with retailers have driven unit sales by over 20 per cent, so we know that this optimisation not only tackles consumer demand for reduced wastage of bagged salad, but also increases the demand for our products by increasing purchase frequency, thus helping to drive category growth.”
As an example, Florette’s Crisp salad range is dropping in size from 200g to 170g, and is coming down in price from £1.75 to £1.50.
Florette believes growth worth in excess of £8 million could be achieved by this move.
News of the new range blueprint comes at the same time as Florette’s biggest-ever marketing investment, which will see the company spend £6m on TV, digital and social activity in 2015.
A £600,000 mixture of digital, print, press and underground advertising to target more than five million on-the-go health-conscious foodies
Florette will be producing a super-powered marketing campaign to mark the launch of its Baby Kale range.
A £600,000 mixture of digital, print, press and underground advertising to target more than five million on-the-go health-conscious foodies.
Identified as ‘new wave healthies’, the salad brand believes these consumers have helped to shape Florette’s super-powered marketing strategy.
Florette will be attempting to spark kale conversation across social media, targeting foodies with adverts in publications such as “The Times”, as well as launching a high impact 48-sheet poster campaign coupled with digital escalator advertising across London’s underground.
Elaine Smith, marketing controller at Florette, said: “More consumers than ever are realising the benefits of superfoods and with continued celebrity endorsement, curly kale is a firm favourite. Our latest creation puts a spin on this popular super leaf, which in its traditional form has to be cooked before eating. Baby Kale can be eaten raw in salads and smoothies – as well as being cooked, so it’s never been easier to enjoy all the health benefits of kale.
“For today’s busy consumer, convenience is essential and we wanted our marketing campaign to reflect this by targeting on-the-go foodies, whilst also inspiring them to get creative with their kale. By combining digital buzz with print, press, as well as billboard advertising in high footfall areas, we will be able to do just that and look forward to launching this exciting campaign in the New Year.”
Last year, curly kale was purchased over 14 million times, and the salad specialist believes this opens up a £3.3 million opportunity for the single leaf sector.
Smith added: “We believe that the positive positioning as a versatile ingredient, as a well as a superfood, will help to deliver incremental purchase occasions and incremental cash value to the rest of the single salad leaf category.”
Baby Kale is on sale now in 60g bags at an RRP of £1.29 in Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Ocado and Waitrose, as well as other retailers.