Souped-up range introduces more homely but contemporary recipes

By Susan Birks

- Last updated on GMT

Related tags Tomato Heinz

Souped-up range introduces more homely but contemporary recipes
Heinz has launched a new offensive in the ambient soups market with a £10m recipe revamp of its classic soups range and a new line of contemporary...

Heinz has launched a new offensive in the ambient soups market with a £10m recipe revamp of its classic soups range and a new line of contemporary recipes.

The company is hoping to reverse the decline in the market for ambient soups, which has been affected by a high take-up of fresh chilled soups over the past few years. It intends the new developments to reclaim customers lost to fresh soups and also appeal to loyal consumers of its existing canned selection.

Heinz has added more of the ingredients that consumers requested to its classic soups, such as more tomatoes to its Cream of Tomato soup and more chicken to its chicken variant. At the same time, it has done a spring clean of its classic soup range, cutting the number of offerings down from 22 to 13 to avoid duplication and create space in the fixture.

The new line of soups has been developed under the Heinz Special banner and mimic recipes created in the kitchen. Heinz worked with its research and development department and a team of external chefs to develop recipes using only ingredients that could be found in consumers kitchen cupboards. All E-numbers, preservatives and colourings have been removed to give them a much more homemade appeal.

"In manufacturing you tend to struggle to replicate recipes as they would be cooked in the kitchen," says senior brand manager Dan Ince. "We had to benchmark every step to check the taste."

Nine variants have been launched, including Spicy Butternut Squash, Spicy Parnsip, Garden Pea & Ham, and Chicken & Sweetcorn Chowder, which are designed to bridge the gap between premium canned soups, such as those made by Baxters, and the company's classic Cream of soups. "They are not premium, but a special everyday brand," says Ince.

As part of the development, Heinz bought two new pieces of equipment for the processing of chillies and parsnips, and is also undergoing crop trials to overcome problems with vegetable seasonality and consistency. "Not all parsnips are the same," says R&D manager Sue Hemsley. "There are four different varieties, and all differ in texture hugely."

Heinz now claims its soups range has the lowest levels of salt, sugar and fat across the whole category. It has also removed the five-a-day logo from its tins in response to claims that canned vegetables may not offer the same benefit as fresh ones.

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