Harvest Moon attended Asia Fruit Logistica in Hong Kong this year, taking with them the Snackables: ready-to-eat snack packs with carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, and radishes. As well as promoting the product, it was also a fact-finding exercise to experience first-hand how the Asian consumers received the Snackables.
"Carrots are our main line in the Snackables range; we pack around 15 million packs each year," explained Ben Meadows from Harvest Moon. "Australia is our main market and we have been exporting the Snackables range to Hong Kong, Dubai, Malaysia, and we are also making progress into Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Japan is another market that has just opened up for us."
© HarvestMoonBen said that the trade show in Hong Kong was a real eye-opener. "It was a great learning curve, talking to and seeing the reactions of the Asian people to our snacks. In Asia, eating raw vegetables is not the done thing, so the whole concept was new to them. Our carrots are very sweet and softer than normal carrots, and some people described them as more like a fruit. Another thing we discovered was that we need to promote the fact that the product is Australian. We know that in Asia, Australian produce is regarded as very green and clean, so we have revamped our logo to have the shape of Australia on it instead of the purple circle."
In Australia, the Snackables are displayed at ambient temperature, but in some hotter countries, they are in refrigerated display cabinets. "We found that the packs were fogging up, so we had our packing team add an anti-fog coating. We also learned that the Asian consumers like to have tamperproof packing, so we have also implemented this."
© HarvestMoon
Ben said they have only touched the surface in the export markets, and there is so much more to do there. "Each one is different, and we need to learn as much as we can about them. A great way to introduce a new product into a new market would be to do sampling in-store, so that consumers can taste the product and understand it."
In Australia, the target demographic is the school lunchboxes, followed by healthy snacking, and surprisingly, the age 65+ consumers love the Snackables carrot as they are softer than a normal carrot.
"For the Asia markets, we are still investigating the target demographics. We need to gather more data on this. It may be a case of developing different packs for different markets."
For more information:
Ben Meadows
Harvest Moon
Tel: +61 3 6428 2505
[email protected]
www.harvestmoon.com.au
