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The Interview - Tivall - First For Frozen Meat-Free Food

Founded in 1986, Tivall was one of the first companies in the world to recognise the growing market for meat-free products. Today it is one of the world's leading suppliers and innovators in this sector. Tivall's state-of-the-art manufacturing base in Northern Israel is dedicated to extensive R&D, which ensures progressive new product development and the creation of high quality, healthy convenience foods for the frozen, meat-free sector. Jane Collins, UK Country Manager for Tivall, spoke to The Grocery Trader. The Grocery Trader - First of all, how big is the UK retail market for frozen meat-free products? How fast is it growing? The UK frozen meat-free market is worth £146 million at RRP, and growing just over 2% year on year. Total frozen generally is in decline and the priority given to chilled food. A major advantage for vegetarian and meat-free products is that they fit the trend towards healthy eating. Historically, meat-free products started in frozen foods. The meat-style sector of the frozen meat-free category - in other words products that mimic meat - is now worth £90 million, or 62% of the total, and growing 6% annually. GT - What's driving the growth? It's driven by the trend for healthy eating and meat reduction. The numbers of vegetarians in the UK are fairly static, but there's a growing trend to meat reduction among other consumers, and these products are part of these consumers' meat-free repertoire. GT - What proportion of frozen meat-free sales are in supermarkets? What other outlets are these products sold in? The supermarkets account for 70% of sales. The rest are in health food stores, specialist stores and traditional independent retailers. GT - How do you feel about that balance in sales? That's fine by us, because it means we're reaching the widest possible audience. We advocate frozen meat-free products being accessible to a large part of the population, not just committed vegetarians - anyone can enjoy our products. GT - What proportion of supermarket frozen meat-free sales are branded? The leading brands Quorn, Linda McCartney and Tivall account for 70% of sales. The leading retailers have developed strong private label offerings in the last five years, which complement the brands. GT - Who owns Tivall? Nestlé owns 28%, and the rest is privately owned. It means we get the benefits of being part of a bigger business, while remaining largely autonomous. GT - Where does the name "Tivall" come from and what does it mean? It comes from the Hebrew words for "Quality from nature, for all." GT - How big is Tivall worldwide in turnover, staff, sales offices etc? Tivall's global turnover is in excess of £40 million, and our UK turnover is £8 million. We have 350 staff worldwide, and sales offices in the UK, Holland, Sweden, Germany and Israel. GT - Your factory's in Israel. Any plans to set up manufacturing in Europe? Yes - we're in the process of setting up manufacturing in the Czech Republic, which will come on stream in Spring 2007. This factory will mean that we can produce both chilled and frozen meat free products. It will give us scope to expand our range considerably and will broaden our market penetration, enabling us to sell to other countries over and above our present focus on the UK, Sweden and Holland. GT - What share of supermarket frozen meat-free sales does Tivall have? We're relatively small in branded terms in the supermarkets, as the majority of our branded sales go through specialist stores. But at the same time we have about 65% of meat-style private label. GT - You sell your products in the UK through a distributor, Foundation Foods. How does that work? Foundation Foods looks after our independent sector business and sells and distributes to those outlets on our behalf, while we (Tivall) retain responsibility for marketing the brand. A separate company, John A Taylor, manages our supply chain to the major multiple grocers, who account for 80% of our UK business, branded and private label. GT - What other European countries do you have a presence in? Our products are also on sale in Holland, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, France and Italy. GT - How important is the UK to you as a marketplace? What characterises Britain as a market for your products? The UK is vital to Tivall. As a marketplace it stands alone, because we're much stronger here in private label, whereas in other European countries we're either first or second in branded sales. Private label is a UK phenomenon: 41% of UK grocery sales across the piece are private label, something which doesn't happen anywhere else. The UK is at the forefront of the convenience foods and concerns about healthy eating. The trends here tend to filter through to Europe, so it is an important market for us to learn from and use these learnings to help our European team meet the growing demands for healthier products abroad. GT - Looking at your branded UK product range, what products do you supply? Our branded products are unique: they're very high quality foods, designed to closely resemble meat. The core of the range is meat-like, appealing to the widest audience and encouraging as many people as possible to reduce their red meat consumption. Our UK branded product list covers Burgers, Frankfurters, Breakfast Sausages, Garlic Butter Kievs, Nuggets, Schnitzels, Drumsticks and Slicing Sausage. GT - What are they made with? They contain a blend of textured soya and wheat proteins, seasoned and flavoured with natural ingredients. GT - Do you produce any Tivall-branded meat-free products that can be used as recipe ingredients? Yes, we launched into ingredients last year with Chicken-style Pieces and Meat-free Mince. GT - Do you offer recipes for these products to be used in? You can find recipes for these on our website, www.tivall.co.uk. They are subtly flavoured and adapt themselves to a variety of different recipes without overpowering them. GT - Do you have links with celebrity chefs? We've chosen not to use celebrity chefs. Instead, we use food experts in different countries to develop appropriate flavours for each place, like our English Breakfast Sausage, which came out here a few years ago and was instantly well received. GT - What's your biggest selling SKU in the UK? Our bestselling UK product is our Frankfurters, 8 to a pack, 240g. Kids love them! GT - Are Tivall products GM free? Do they contain cholesterol or hydrogenated fats? All our products are GM-free. None of them contain cholesterol, except the Kievs, which do so because they are made with butter. Tivall products also have no hydrogenated fats, artificial colouring, preservatives or flavouring GT - Just to remind us: what are the health benefits of meat-free products? They're a really good source of protein, first of all. Second, soya can contribute to lowering blood cholesterol when used as part of a healthy diet, but you need to consume at least 25g per day. GT - Do Tivall products appeal to non-vegetarians as well? Are growing numbers of meat eaters discovering them? Absolutely yes to both questions! Meat reducers are the driving force behind the growth of the UK frozen meat-free market, not vegetarians. Incidentally, some 4-7% of people in the UK claim to be vegetarians, but a number of them also admit to eating fish and poultry! In our research, around 60% of the population is actively trying to reduce their red meat consumption, and turning to meat-free as a healthier diet. GT - What are you doing to educate the wider audience about the benefits of these products? We're running our web site, and we've been advertising and carrying out in-store sampling. GT - What have you been doing in terms of advertising, and who is your target audience? Our strategy is based on the fact that our appeal is much broader than just vegetarians, though they are an extremely important group for us. Last October we started an awareness campaign in the trade press, and in the consumer media we've been increasing our presence in the healthy lifestyle magazines, addressing people who are actively considering frozen meat-free products. We've exhibited at a couple of specialist diet and lifestyle shows in the last 18 months, and we're currently reviewing where we go next in our sampling. GT - Where should Tivall products be merchandised in store? They should go in the frozen section, ideally next to healthier eating, in a dedicated section labeled either Meat-Free or Vegetarian. GT - How do you work with supermarkets and other grocery retailers to grow their frozen meat-free sales? We like to maintain a positive and productive relationship with all our customers. We do this by spending a lot of time understanding our consumers, concept testing and benchmarking Tivall products against competitor frozen meat-free products and meat products too, when appropriate. Effectively we're the category captains of frozen meat-style private label in the UK. We run our private label business like a brand, promoting, sampling, featuring in other media such as retailers' in-store magazines and being proactive in our NPD. GT - Where do you see Tivall's UK sales going from here? Onwards and upwards! Through our category management work we have our finger firmly on the frozen meat-free pulse and are moving forward with the market in every sense. It's an exciting time for us. We have the new Czech factory coming on stream next year; there's a growing level of awareness which is being converted into sales; and we have a lot of innovative projects that we'll be unveiling over the next 12-18 months. GT - Final question: what effect do you expect all this activity to have on Tivall UK's bottom line? We expect it to translate into sales, and help to double our turnover over the next two years.