In what it boasts as a 'first-to-market' sustainability move, Sydney-based gourmet sausages and burger specialist, Peppercorn Food Company, has achieved a significant sales fillip after introducing a new range of fully biodegradable and compostable meat trays for sales of its products across the country.
The company, which started off business out of the back of a Sydney butcher shop in 1997 and has since grown from supplying one store in Neutral Bay, NSW, to supplying Woolworths and other independent retailers nationally, says the move was designed to give it a point of difference in a highly competitive market segment.
Describing the new packaging as a “revolutionary category first”, the company says it also launched the new trays onto market with an objective of driving sales growth.
And the new packs appear to have done the trick – within four weeks of hitting shelves, Peppercorn has been able to point to a 12 per cent spike in sales.
Peppercorn managing director Dean Murphy says the move to the new packs was prompted by the need to claim valuable space on supermarket shelves at a time when suppliers are not only competing with each other, but with the growing range of supermarket private label offerings.
“With increasing competition for shelf space within leading retailers and the brand’s premium positioning, the new look needed to provide a point of difference to ensure continued growth amongst price-conscious grocery buyers, and make Peppercorn products stand out on shelf,” he says.
The trays were supplied by local company SPI-Bioproducts, and as well as being fully biodegradeable and compostable, are manufactured from fully renewable materials and are designed to be both freezable and microwaveable.
Tweaking to the packs was carried out by design agency Saltmine Design group, with the aim of further standing out from competing packs in the meat and smallgoods markets.
Saltmine was briefed to design new look labels for the range, which needed to continue to communicate the key claims for loyal consumers.
In conjunction with the new packs, Saltmine also designed and developed a website to back up the packs’ sustainability claims.
