NZ Dairy Summer 2020

8 | nz dairy Kings Road Dairy is proud to be associated with Lewis Road Creamery. We are Lewis Road’s appointed manufacturing partner for producing their rich and creamy New Zealand yoghurt. Based at the foothills of the Southern Alps having access to the best quality milk in Canterbury allows us to be the pre-eminent boutique yoghurt producer in the South Island. We wish them well and look forward to continuing in their journey to produce more top quality NZ yoghurts. Enquiries are welcome | info@krdairy.co.nz | www.krdairy.co.nz DAIRY PEOPLE » Lewis Road Creamery Brand NZ a force in international Virginia Wright G eneral Manager Nicola O’Rourke started with Lewis Road Creamery early in 2018. As their products go from strength to strength both here and overseas she puts their success down to their authentic back-to-basics approach to dairy as well as the power of Brand New Zealand in the international market place. She believes they’re a win-win for both the consumer and the New Zealand dairy industry. “When we started eight years ago our vision was to produce what we describe as “dairy as it should be,” she explains, “while at the same time adding as much value as possible to New Zealand’s foundational primary industry.” What that means in practice is producing grass- fed milk and butter that is permeate and PKE free and which may also be organic, but not necessarily. “We don’t want to mess around with the milk,” explains Nicola, “we want to keep it as natural as it possible can be.” While it was their chocolate milk that arguably brought them to consumers’ attention in New Zealand, they also produce butter, white milk both organic and single-source jersey milk, a range of premium ice creams and more recently, NZ cultured yoghurt. As a young company they soon realized that they needed to look for opportunities to expand their market offshore, and it was logical that if New Zea- landers were prepared to pay more for high quality, ethically and sustainably sourced dairy products, that international consumers would do the same. Around the same time they were joined by South- ern Pastures – which holds a portfolio of 20 farms in Waikato and Canterbury – as a shareholder, a natural fit with the Lewis Road brand. “They hold their farms to a very high level of farming which they call their ten star certified values,” explains Nicola. The Southern Pastures 10 Star Certified Values Program was created to deliver premium healthy products to consumers seeking values for money. The AsureQuality certified values include among others being grass-fed, certified GMO free, environ- mental sustainability, no RSVT or growth hormones, and no PKE or animal by-products. The certification helps ensure that they’re known as trustworthy in an international marketplace full of unsubstantiated marketing claims. Lewis Road features the certified values on the packaging it uses for its international market, based on their knowledge of the US market in particular, but also Australia’s. They know that their consum- ers are incredibly busy and that they want to make quick decisions in the supermarket, knowing that the products align with their values, such as being ethically and sustainably sourced . “Covid has really accelerated something we’d already noticed which is the rise of the conscious consumer,” says Nicola. “With a tiny little butter pack you’re communi- cating that very quickly to a consumer as they’re making a two second grab off the shelf. So on the front of our butter packs in the Australian and the US markets we call out a number of things to help them navigate that choice at speed, and the first one is New Zealand.” Lewis Road make the most of Brand New Zealand’s great reputation offshore and Nicola believes that the work done recently by NZTE around the Made With Care campaign is further enhancing it. When they first launched offshore the “New Zealand” was quite small on the front of the pack but they soon learned that it should be front and centre as a sort of short hand for consumer decision-makers. The “Non GMO project verified” butterfly label is also a well-recognized certification logo in the US and increasingly recognized in Australia, although it’s not yet big in New Zealand. It shares space with the Certified Values logo which encourages consumers to go online and find out more. “That’s about all we can squeeze onto the pack but we know from shopper research that the decision hierarchy is very much natural, grass-fed, non GMO, ethically and sustainably sourced and then underneath that actually sits organic and other certifications.” The low position of “organic” on the hierarchy relative to the other values was a surprise to the Lewis Road team and is further supported by more shopper research done by market analysts Mintel for the US Natural Channel, made up of various chains of retail strands for a total of somewhere between 3000 – 5000 stores. “So the great news is that if you look at the New Zealand farming system as it is today it actually already ticks a number of those values that matter to the conscious consumer.” Not surprisingly Nicola is a strong advocate for the dairy industry and believes that targeting these high value markets could work well for the industry as a whole. “It’s not necessarily easy but if we get our point of difference right, and its authentic and meaning- ful and people can see it and understand the value in it then you build really loyal consumers from that. That’s why we get out of bed in the morning. Our farmers work so hard so why would we not be trying to get the best possible value for all the work we do?” “Covid has really accelerated something we’d already noticed which is the rise of the conscious consumer. With a tiny little butter pack you’re communicating that very quickly to a consumer as they’re making a two second grab off the shelf. So on the front of our butter packs in the Australian and the US markets we call out a number of things to help them navigate that choice at speed, and the first one is New Zealand.” Lewis Road features the New Zealand brand prominently along with its certified values – grass fed, non GMO, sustainably sourced – on the packaging it uses for its international market.