Foreigners showing their taste for our convenient dough

MANAIA - It's not just New Zealand wine that's being drunk around the world - our baking is also attracting a lot of attention.

Hotels in the international Sheraton chain, outlets at Disneyworld in Florida and both the MGM Grand and Caesar's Palace hotel-casinos in Las Vegas are among a long list of notable places where New Zealand dough has risen to the top.

One of the nation's oldest family-owned bakeries, Taranaki-based Yarrows, is making its name in an ever-growing array of export markets.

The company won a multimillion-dollar deal two years ago to supply a food chain, American-based sandwich giant Subway, with more than 14,000 stores worldwide.

Yarrows is now supplying dough, bread, cookies, muffins and pastries to Subway outlets in New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Japan.

Since then, Yarrows' total exports to Australia, South-east Asia, Japan, the United States and the Pacific Basin have grown to $10 million a year.

Covering almost a hectare in the small Taranaki township of Manaia, the company's plant operates 24-hours a day, seven-days-a-week, as more than 200 shift-workers from all parts of Taranaki strive to meet fast-growing export and local orders.

In 1982, Yarrows developed its own methods and technology to produce frozen bread dough that can be baked anywhere.

To test and prove the system the company established a bakery in New Plymouth that used frozen dough from Manaia, 100km away.

The demand this created is still increasing, but managing director Noel Yarrow says it was not until 1988 that the company thought about exporting.

"The breakthrough came through the New Zealand trade commissioner in San Francisco when we received an inquiry from a small bakery in Seattle that had pioneered a method of making frozen croissants that involved using top-quality butter.

"As a result, we were able to negotiate a technology transfer and secure rights to use their production method."

The diversification was so successful that Yarrows began increasing its frozen range to cover many different types of loaves and bread rolls, as well as croissants, Danish pastries, muffins, biscuits and other bakery products.

"Our growth over the past decade, in both New Zealand and the export sector, really stems from our ability to identify and manufacture products that ease the workload of busy people in the baked goods business," Mr Yarrow says.

The company's big range of frozen dough products means customers can bake without time-consuming preparation.

"Our Danish pastry, for example, has a number of extremely thin layers.

"It takes more than 15 hours to make it and let it rest adequately before freezing it in ready-to-bake form."

The company has trained bakery technicians and sales people in all states of Australia and in Singapore.

From the firm's inception, three generations of the Yarrow family have run the bakery, which began with a staff of six. Its staff level reached 50 by 1982, but has soared to over 200 since exports began 10 years ago. - NZPA