New team of experts to help Dawn’s product development
Headed by Alison Haselgrove, Dawn Group’s development manager, this creative “think tank” will give its opinion on some 600 to 700 ideas per year, before eventually recommending as many as 100 new dishes for launch.
It is at a state-of-the-art innovation suite at Dawn Pac’s plant in Cross Hands in Wales that the new product development department decides what culinary delights hit the shops.
“Our role is to create innovative products to excite the customer and keep Dawn at the forefront of a highly competitive market,” said Ms Haselgrove.
“The industry continually has to deal with increasing demands for foods which bring improvements in convenience of preparation, convenience of eating and even convenience of disposal.”
She said Dawn specialised in nutritious, added-value meat products that were easy for consumers to bring to table.
“Meat continues to be the hero of the average meal for many, and the challenge we constantly face is to present the dish in a way that the customer finds is good value, appetising and interesting.
“In short, what we produce is the centrepiece of the meal - freeing the customer of a couple of hours of preparation and allowing them to serve it up with their own vegetables and trimmings, both for everyday and those ‘get-together’ occasions such as barbecues or Sunday roasts.”
As part of ongoing product innovation, Ms Haselgrove will visit the Dawn Meats plant in Midleton, Co Cork, next month for a workshop on adding value to the beef carcass.
“We will be looking at the type of meat that is produced on the site. We believe, from the team in Midleton, that some cuts are left over when servicing markets in Europe.
“What we are trying to do is have a workshop with the team to see if there are ways that we can use those cuts to give us exciting products over here in the added value side of things,” she said.
Ms Haselgrove also plans to meet with RELAY, the national dissemination service charged with communicating the results of publicly-funded food research to the Irish food industry.
