Page 32 - Food & Drink Magazine April 2019

SNACKS & CONVENIENCE FOOD
A cracking success
Award-winning Melbourne-based cracker company, Fine Food Holdings, is set to build one of the largest production plants in the southern hemisphere. Margaret Megard reports.
FOUR years after etablishing its manufacturing business, Melbourne-based food company Fine Food Holdings (FFH) is having a cracker of a time.
With its ObFinest Specialty Crackers, FFH won Top Ranked Supplier 2018 in the Australian Grocery Deli category of the Advantage Report, just four years after establishing its manufacturing division.
The awards are run by customer research industry specialist, Advantage Australia. It conducts 360-degree surveys with executive and buying teams across the retail sector, including Woolworths, Coles, Metcash and convenience groups. Companies are scored against KPIs including: business alignment; communications; innovation; responsiveness; strategy; growth; and service. Advantage Australia chose FFH, and identified it as the best at cultivating relationships between suppliers and retailers.
SEIZING THE GAP
FFH was acquired last year by Champ Private Equity which owns a few premium food brands under the umbrella company Gourmet Foods Group. However FFH started out as a seafood business which also had a focus on entertaining products.
“Premium entertaining crackers seemed to be an ideal adjacency and complement to our existing entertainment product portfolio,” CEO Todd Wilson says.
Wilson has a long history in the food industry and says he and his partners were all from large corporate environments who knew the market and had
“ We’ve been very innovative, fast to market and aggressive in developing new products.”
well,” Wilson says.
A parmesan and black
sesame cracker has also become a permanent part of the range. “It’s made from seventy nine
per cent parmesan cheese and is a full-flavour product.”
Wilson says these are two products they trialled in test markets that worked well. FFH plans to relaunch them as part of its permanent offering in the next two to three months.
CRACKER OF A SITE
The company has experienced exceptional sales growth in both domestic and offshore markets since it began four years ago.
As a result, FFH is building a larger manufacturing facility on a greenfield site in Victoria that is expected to open in May.
Wilson says it will be a world-class manufacturing facility with eight production lines up and running just two months after moving in.
Two more lines are planned for early 2020.
He believes it will be the largest dedicated premium cracker plant in the southern hemisphere.
“We’ve always had the
belief with our manufacturing division that you set up the best you can, don’t compromise
32 | Food&Drink business | April 2019 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au
well-established relationships. Wilson saw a gap in the deli cracker market and recognised the opportunity.
“We just felt that there wasn’t an innovative, active supplier in that space, offering the major retailers in Australia a quality product,” Wilson says.
“We had to deliver a brand proposition range and offer it to those retailers who wanted to support it and put it on the shelves.
“We also had to find what the consumer wanted as well.” Wilson and his partners
had previously imported a limited supply of ‘cracker-style formats’ in the seafood division. But this was a leap. To create ObFinest Specialty Crackers required investment in capital and equipment. While Wilson says it was a “big call to jump into building a food manufacturing facility”, the team was already in the space and could see the opportunities.
Its first foray into the market was an Australian-made premium wafer cracker.
“Very soon after, we invested and developed concepts and
talked to the retailers about a second product style.
“It then got it to a point where we were prepared to invest in a whole range of new equipment and new production lines to make the second style. We did that pretty quickly, in about 12 months,” Wilson says.
AGGRESSIVE APPROACH
According to Wilson, FFH continues to look at what is going on in other markets around the world as well as innovating and investing in new products.
Some of the successful ranges of ObFinest Specialty Cracker varieties include Cranberry & Pumpkin Seed, Fig & Almond and Apricot & Macadamia.
Its seasonal Christmas lines were so successful the range will become permanent, Wilson says.
“We’ve just launched an ObFinest seeded flatbread that’s made from ninety four per cent seeds.
“It’s very much on trend as a low-carbohydrate product... It’s a product you can snack
on – you can carry cheese and dips on it and it’s worked really