Teamwork and innovation gets Fonterra's Nurture to market

Photo / File

Content brought to you by Fonterra

There's an interesting story of innovation and teamwork behind one of Fonterra's new products.

Nurture, a cultured milk drink was created at the home of one of the co-op's food technologists, after Covid meant the team couldn't get access to their usual laboratories.

Elise van Ginkel had all the ingredients delivered to her home in Auckland, where she mixed them in her own kitchen, CEO of Fonterra's Asia Pacific business, Judith Swales told The Country Sport Breakfast's Craig Cumming.

"It's what we call a really entrepreneurial mindset."

Focusing on food quality, Van Ginkel eventually got the product just right and not just in her kitchen, Swales said.

"What [the team] did is they took the product out and they did socially distanced testing in parks and in outdoor spaces to get people to test the taste and the texture."

Once the correct formulation was perfected, the team made batches of Nurture themselves and packed them off to Singapore.

The whole process was a great example of the "insurgent brand model," Swales said.

"Put simply, an insurgent brand is one that has a clear vision and more of an entrepreneurial mission. So it's committed to fulfilling what we call an unmet need."

Through research, Fonterra found an unmet need for a new gut health product in Southeast Asia.

The co-op then established a small team of six employees who set out to identify gaps in the growing health and wellbeing category.

"What we found in Singapore … was that while they loved their cultured milk drinks, they were wary of the existing gut health products because they contained too much sugar," Swales said.

So, the team set about developing a product that used only a little sugar and had added vitamins to support immunity - unlike regular cultured milks on the market – and Nurture was born.

The next three months would be imperative in determining whether Fonterra took the Nurture brand idea further or "failed fast" and moved on, Swales said.

"So no matter what happens to Nurture, we've already learned a tremendous amount very quickly and very cheaply on this journey."

Listen below:

Nurture hit the market three weeks ago and was currently available in Singapore on eCommerce platforms, in three New Zealand flavours: Mānuka Honey, Golden Kiwi & Strawberry and Boysenberry & Apple.

The team's "start-up like" model used to create Nurture also meant Fonterra was able to get it to market quickly and on a shoestring budget, Swales said.

Nurture's product development was not only a great example of teamwork but also the "entrepreneurial mindset," Swales had mentioned before.

"If you can't get somebody to do it for you then you do it for yourself and you get on and make it happen and that's exactly what the team did."