Page 17 - Food&Drink Magazine August 2019

and innovation
business, the acquisition also opens up opportunities for Newly Weds to expand into New Zealand.
“Traditionally our
New Zealand customers were serviced from production in Australia. Diron was a great opportunity. It’s not a big business, but we intend to expand in our relaunch of all the retail products later this year. We were in the liquid sauces business, but we’re putting a new increased effort into the area as it is growing.
“It gives us the ability to supply our traditional customer base in New Zealand from this capability. We’re currently spending quite a bit of time and money on it to get it to expand so that we can supply our current base of customers in New Zealand. We’ve started to transition products made in Australia over to them.”
The acquisition has been a catalyst for further facility development in New Zealand for the company. “We built a plant five years ago, designed to last us ten. But we’ve grown three hundred per cent in the last five years, so we’ve reached capacity. We’re now building a significantly larger facility that will be ready by 2021. It’s about five times the size of our current facility, and we intend to expand our range of products into New Zealand quite significantly. Products are currently importing from Australia but if we can’t bake in New Zealand, we’re going to install the capacity to do so.
“We expect our business in New Zealand to double again in the next five to ten years, which would make us a quite substantial business over there.”
Newly Weds started with 3000 square metres when it opened in Australia to more than 16,000 square metres now. It has a traditional crumb line, extruder and blending capabilities from a couple of hundred kilograms to 1.5 tonne lots and a blending facility in Perth.
Now with its expansion and growth in New Zealand, Boyle is at pains to point out that none of this would be possible without a confident and calm team who work“very,veryhard”. ✷
quite rigid structures, Boyle says. “We’re doing a new product for a customer, more than one a day, every day. Some of those are quite simple changes – reducing the sodium level for example, and others are absolutely brand new, different combinations of flavours and functional ingredients.”
There are also rigid processes around the product delivery. That the product matches
the sample provided to the customer, the raw materials
are consistent and the labelling correct. Managing that while also allowing risk-taking can be challenging, but Boyle says the company shareholders
are hugely supportive from product development to business acquisitions.
A TASTY CRUMB
A large part of Newly Weds is its breadcrumbs business. “Our coating business is where we started,” Boyle says. It runs two lines–pankoandtraditional.
Five years ago the company decided to launch a panko product which resulted in the company doubling its manufacturing capacity for the line. Panko crumbs are a Japanese style breadcrumb, that is electro-baked, not baked in an oven. “We use electricity to bake it and it produces that light, crispy, elongated crumb,” Boyle explains.
from Spain,” Boyle says.
“We bought this line and it
now operates twenty four hours a day, five days a week. It bakes one kilogram bread loaves and then turns them into breadcrumbs. Two hours after the flour goes in at one end, breadcrumbs come out the other.”
Its seasoning business – functional blends and premixes for bacon and ham cures, salamis
COVER STORY
“ There’s a wide mix between great new flavours and interesting ideas to solving a complicated technical question in a coating or in a functional marinade.”
It also has a traditional breadcrumb line which they purchased in Europe four years ago. “Traditionally, breadcrumbs were made by bakeries from returned bread, but as that supply has reduced there has been an international shortage. People wereimportingbreadcrumbs
and sausage flavourings – accounts for about 45 per cent of the company’s revenue.
EXPANDING THE FAMILY
At the end of last year, Newly Weds acquired New Zealand manufacturer Diron Industries. Primarilyaliquidsauces
www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au | August 2019 | Food&Drink business | 17