Reducing the risk of capital investment – Greenlea Premier Meats
Jan 27

Reducing the risk of capital investment – Greenlea Premier Meats

When you have 80 years of history in one area of food production and choose to bring on an entirely new product line, it’s a pretty risky move in itself. So splashing out on a new processing facility warrants some serious consideration!

In mid-2020, Hamilton-based corporate, Greenlea Premier Meats purchased a boutique bone broth company called Restore. The plan was to bring production of the broths into one of the existing Greenlea factories and then scale up to export volumes. This is where The FoodBowl came in.

Greenlea Business Development Manager, Julie McDade says a large part of the scale up and trial process at The FoodBowl was around trying various pieces of equipment before they made significant capital expenditure. “This was incredibly valuable and gave us the confidence to purchase the right equipment knowing it would do what was required.”

At The FoodBowl, Greenlea was able to experiment with different food processing machines, raw materials and packaging formats and Julie says that to be able to develop new products without interfering with your own plant and production schedule is a valuable asset for food manufacturers.

“To be able to test a number of theories and do this trial work gave us such valuable learnings,” she says.

“The team there is so great to work with. They helped us through all the logistics and walked us through all our options and held our hands every step of the way, meaning we were able to get exactly what we needed from our time in their incredible facility.”

Greenlea now has its own brand-new broth processing facility installed in the company’s Morrinsville meat production plant, has launched Restore into New Zealand retail as a prelude to various export markets and there are also plans for further value-added export products. Of course, The FoodBowl will be their first stop when they get to this point, Julie says.