New Products Introduced at BioFach

Whether anti-ageing cream, fine wine vinegars or health-promoting Acerola cherry supplements in organic quality, this year’s BioFach was once again the opportunity to present new products. The innovations show in Hall 1, held for the first time this year, was ideal for introducing  new products.   Over four days of the fair, people were able to stand around next to the display shelves for new products discussing the organic newcomers.

Picture: The new products show at BioFach 2006
 

It was not only here but also in the corridors and on the stands that over 430 new products from about 150 manufacturers were advertised and trialled on visitors to the fair.

The picture on the left of the stand of Grabower Süßwaren GmbH shows how enthusiastic a large group of specialists were to sample the first organic chocolate-covered marshmallows.  Frank Szeleschus (picture below), the marketing expert for the Mecklenburg company, is proud of this ‘first-in-the-world product’, and he is convinced it will be a success: “The chocolate-covered marshmallow has had a huge impact. Not a word has been said against it.” The new product will be distributed from 20 April via the wholefood wholesale trade and retailers. Mr Szeleschus is confident: “We  expect to produce a million packs of six  each in the first year. Lots of the visitors to our stand just love them because they are reminded of when they were children.” Decades of not having chocolate-covered marshmallows are forgotten in a flash. As a marketing plus,  the plastic see-through packaging may in future be of compostable material that is just as transparent as conventional plastic. The chocolate-covered marshmallows are marketed together with other exquisite new products like crepes au chocolat and chocolate rolls under the brand name Linea Natura that was created a good year ago for the specialist wholefood trade.

The introduction of “smoothies” to the German market could also make a big impact. A product that has been popular  in the USA for decades has been unknown  here and  not available. Now a Swiss company based in Zürich is venturing to manufacture and market this product.  Under the name “Traktor Bio Smoothie”, it is selling five different juices (picture) for a quick, satisfying drink in the five-minute break in the office. As well as raspberry with cranberry, exotic fruit combinations like guava, pineapple and mango are also on offer. Finely pureed fruit or added banana give the drink in the 250 g bottles its thick consistency. Apart from the thick juices, two sorts of lassi - a mixture of drinking yoghurt and fruit juice originating in India - are on sale. Whereas there is already a network of 400 stores selling fresh juices in Switzerland, in Germany a marketing system is being built up via Kormoran Naturwaren in Berlin.

There are innovations on the market even in the case of traditional products like dried fruit. The import company Juers in Hamburg is selling pineapple, banana and mango in freeze-dried crisp quality. This new type of product in attractive packaging (picture) can be added to muesli or eaten as a healthy snack. Freeze-dried fruit on its own or covered with chocolate is an amazing and very tasty  innovation that has already been taken up by several companies.

“The idea of stage presentations has been a great success in every case, and we can certainly build on this in the future,” says Marita Odia, a freelance business consultant. At a cost of 990 Euros, companies interested in this type of presentation had their products introduced by Elisabeth Avakian-Reuter and Marita Odia in three ten minute sessions in front of the camera. At the end, the companies were given a video recording and a press report in German and English for use in their own marketing. In the run-up to the recording, a catalogue of questions was devised with  customer input regarding product and sales information. Up to 50 BioFach visitors at any one time were sitting at café tables in front of the stage listening to the presentations.

As an expert in wholefood, Marita Odia is convinced that “the potential for presenting new organic products effectively  has by no means been fully exploited even in specialist shops. Different kinds of presentation, for example application of products or taste sampling, could be used much more often in stores.”

The innovations show began on Thursday at midday (16.2.2006) with the focus on best sellers of the year. Biovista established which products had been particularly successful in the previous year: Pure Oats Crunchy by  Barnhouse, Color Crème Tizian by Logona and the drinking yoghurt Raspberry-Lemon by the Andechser Dairy were all presented. Naturally, Poland (Country of the Year) was prominent  in the staged programme, with “Wholefood from Poland and Eastern Europe” being presented in detail after the best sellers of the year. Another focus of discussions and conversations was natural cosmetics.

The whole area of activity surrounding the new product podium is becoming an independent part of BioFach. This development does justice to the great effort invested constantly by organic manufacturers to produce innovations. As a consequence, new products are much more in the limelight, and a much wider public gets to know them. Of course, it is ultimately the market, the consumer, who decides the success or failure of a new product. But to guarantee optimal conditions for a company to get its new products up and running, the stage programme has to be seen as a complete success.

All the new products at BioFach 2006 can be found on:

http://www.biofach.de/main/d67sd8jt/e61ug5bi/d71r3tjn/dfqwm4om/page.html