Winner: Pitango Innovative Cuisine Ltd
Pitango Innovative Cuisine Ltd, a very exciting, small, fast growing Auckland business that creates and manufactures innovative organic and healthy food products, has won the Award for Best Business Operating Internationally under $10 million in the New Zealand International Business Awards 2009.
The company operates in the chilled segment of the ready to eat market, selling through major supermarkets. It exports its entire product range, including organic soups, risottos, curries and pasta meals.
Pitango was started in 2002 by recent immigrants to New Zealand, Yasmin and Ofer Shenhav, who wanted to create food products that were good for the family and good for the environment.
From that two-person operation the business has grown to employ 35 people and is going from strength to strength, winning international awards and achieving sales growth of 33 percent in the year ending June 2009. Most of that growth is from exports sales, says Chief Executive Wade Gillooly, who was brought on board at the start of the year to help take the business to a new level of domestic and international success.
“The Pitango brand has got a great story to tell,” says Mr Gillooly. “Our products are high taste and high quality. Pitango is broader than merely an organic brand and this has allowed us to successfully tap into both core organic consumers as well as a much wider range of consumers who focus on taste, goodness, health, and convenience. Our products are also affordable and put organics into the mainstream.”
Product innovation and the flexibility to respond rapidly to international food trends means Pitango is able to capitalise on first mover advantage, says Mr Gillooly. “We’ve developed products to respond to consumers increasing desire for healthy products, including gluten free, dairy free, meat free and low fat. We are also creating products to meet the growing demand for organics, taste ethnicity in food, convenient meal solutions and sustainability.”
Pitango was the world’s first carbon neutral fresh food manufacturer, gaining independent carboNZeroCertTM certification through Landcare Research. This entails measuring its carbon footprint from supply farm-gate through processing, shipping products to market, to the refrigerator units its products are displayed in in-store.
The company has also created technology that gives Pitango products a longer shelf life than its competitors, which allows it to export to distant markets.
Mr Gillooly says adapting products to suit different market tastes is going to be a key to success.
Another key is the strong relationships Pitango builds with its international distributors.
“We work very very closely with our distributors and consider them our business partners. We have complete transparency and visibility in each other’s business – around tenders, managing stock, new product development – and that creates a really strong relationship.”
Australia currently accounts for almost all Pitango’s export sales, but it is also developing markets in Hong Kong and Singapore.
“Our focus is on ensuring that we do our current markets very well and then develop new international markets working within our capabilities.
“Growing internationally is challenging and exciting – you need to have some aspirational goals to push the business forward. My vision is for Pitango to be the leading chilled soup and chilled meals manufacturer in Australasia – we’re almost there – and to grow our horizons into Pacific Rim markets.”
He says there are lots of opportunities for new product development and for Pitango to expand beyond grocery channels into food service and route trade.
“We have the staff, the innovation and the technical capability to harness those international opportunities. The staff at Pitango are fantastic. Many have been here since day one and they’ve got a real stake in the growth of the business going forward.”
For further information
Wade Gillooly, Chief Executive, Pitango Innovative Cuisine Ltd, 09 479 1100, wade@pitango.co.nz, www.pitango.co.nz
Ann Clifford, Corporate Communications Manager, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, 04 816 8321, 027 283 3858, ann.clifford@nzte.govt.nz
