Boring Oat Milk has landed a distribution deal with Woolworths in Australia.
Boring Oat Milk has landed a distribution deal with Woolworths in Australia.
Boring Oat Milk has rolled out in more than 1000 Woolworths supermarkets in Australia.
Boring will be stocked in 953 supermarkets and 80 metro locations.
The company was founded in 2021.
Kiwi plant-based oat milk company Boring has secured a distribution deal with Australia’s largest supermarket chain Woolworths.
Boring will supply 95% of Woolworths sites in Australia – including 953 supermarkets and 80 metro locations with its Original and Barista oat milk varieties.
Founder Morgan Maw saidthe expansion is a significant milestone in Boring’s international journey.
“It’s great to secure another big volume market… we’re investing a lot of marketing here and things like that,” Maw told the Herald from Australia.
“For us it’s really diversifying ourselves. Not being so reliant on domestic and having another strong market.”
Maw has made the temporary move to Australia to support the launch, which began last week.
While Australia is often the next logical step for Kiwi brands, Maw said they were “really cautious” about going across the Tasman.
“They’ve always shown their interest but we’ve sort of been just keeping it light and friendly and really we didn’t want to commit until we were 100% sure that we could actually make it work on many levels,” she said.
Maw said they had been talking to Woolworths for 2.5 years.
“To start with we’ve actually just been very tentative with our conversations with [retailers] and wanted to make sure that we were going to be valued, that we weren’t going to get lost in the noise of all the competitors [in Australia].”
Boring is backed by Hawke’s Bay company Apollo Foods – the company behind beverage brands Picky Juice and The Apple Press.
Founded in 2021, the oat milk company has gone from strength to strength, now holding around 31% of New Zealand’s oat milk category and 12.4% of total plant milk.
Boring Oat Milk founder Morgan Maw.
Maw said the move into Australian supermarkets justified Boring spending more on manufacturing equipment.
“We really needed another big volume market to validate that spend for us.”
Maw said based on forecasts they expected Australian sales would match that of NZ within a couple of years.
“In NZ we sell into Woolworths. Our best-selling [product], Barista, sells on average 95 units per store per week. But in Australia, we’re looking at about a quarter of that rate of sale,” she said.
“Even though we’ve got four times the amount of distribution points [in Australia] than what we have in NZ, the rate of sale is only a quarter of what we’re actually doing in NZ. Once we build up, it will be equivalent. It’s just that there’s so much more competition [in Australia].”
Boring uses oats from Otago and Southland and the milk is processed at scale in Apollo’s Hawke’s Bay manufacturing plant.
Research commissioned by the brand in 2023 found oats grown in NZ produce 93% fewer emissions than dairy and use 70% less land.
“We know that Australians are turning to premium plant-based products more than ever, and Boring is ready to meet that demand with a product that’s simple, sustainable and made for everyday use,” Maw said.
Cameron Smith is an Auckland-based journalist with the Herald business team. He joined the Herald in 2015 and has covered business and sports. He reports on topics such as retail, small business, the workplace and macroeconomics.
