To see an opportunity, Skånemejerier
In 1994 Skånemejerier, a Swedish dairy company, launched the first functional food product aimed at consumers in the Swedish food market. It was named ProViva. ProViva is Latin and means Pro Life. It is a probiotic fruit beverage with an oat base. More than 10 years later Skånemejerier is still in the frontier of new product development and research & development within functional food. Skånemejeriers goal is to be the best known health company in Scandinavia before 2015. To get their view of the food industry, Øresund Food Network met up with Lena Nyberg, Health & Nutrition Manager, and Urban Fasth, Senior Brand Manager, at Skånemejerier.
- The ProViva story started in the mid 1980's at the Department of Surgery at the University hospital in Lund. When patients is about to go through larger surgery they are kept on an empty stomach and are at the same time given a great amount of antibiotic medicine. This result in the patient's normal gut flora being knocked out and this may cause leakages of aggressive bacteria to surrounding tissue. These aggressive bacteria can in worse case knockout vital organs, says Lena Nyberg.
Professor Stig Bengmark, at the Department of Surgery at the University hospital in Lund, took the problem seriously and began to search for a solution.
- Professor Bengmark turned to Professor Kåre Larsson at the Department of Food Technology, Lund University and discussed the problem. He got the advice to tube feed his patients with oat, oat that contain a "kind" bacteria. Kåre Larsson then turned to Professor in microbiology, Nils Molin, who at that time was in charge of a research team in Lund that studied lactobacillae. The most interesting lactobacillae strain isolated from the gut of healthy people was Lactobacillus plantarum 299v (Lp 299v), which later on became the ProViva bacteria. It turned out that this bacteria grows very well on oat. Clinical studies also showed that the combination of Lp 229v and oat worked very well on the original problem with patients about to go through larger surgery. At this time Skånemejerier and Probi came into the picture working with a new product development (NPD) project and the collaboration lead to the fruit beverage ProViva. It is a great recipe for NPD to combine the best of both worlds, research from cross-disciplinary research institutes and the industry. The finding of Lp 299v is a result of Swedish research. This innovative research is characterized by enthusiasm and entrepreneurship, says Lena Nyberg.
Creating a commercial product out of grey oat gruel may seem as a difficult task. Claiming it to have health beneficial characteristics may seem as an even bigger struggle. But with the right attitude and support it was to become a great success story.
- It was very important that we had support from the academic world. Stig Bengmark and Bengt Jeppsson, both surgery researchers, spread the word to their colleagues. When it comes from within the hospitals it inspires trust and today you can find ProViva in nearly all hospitals in Sweden. It is very important that the establishment believe in the idea at first. Consumers often do not know what they need. It has to come the other way around, and our task is to convince them that it works and is good for them. Another factor is that we are a small company that is open to new ideas from outside the company walls. The researchers first presented the idea to the largest dairy company in Sweden who showed no interest because they felt that they already possessed all the knowledge they needed inside their own organization, says Lena Nyberg.
Apart from the ProViva product line, Skånemejerier also have another product family with health beneficial characteristics, called PrimaLiv. The products in the PrimaLiv line all have different health messages.
- If we take the PrimaLiv product family we have 4 different products with different health beneficial characteristics, in opposite to the ProViva family where all products have the same added health ingredient. The PrimaLiv product line contains one fruit drink with Omega-3 from fish, one yoghurt shot with plantsterols that lower blood cholesterol, one drinking yoghurt with the probiotic bacteria Lactobacillus reuteri from Biogaia, that strengthen your resistance. Finally we have a yoghurt with a betaglucan muesli in a top cup, which balance your blood sugar and reduce blood cholesterol. An all in one product would be too complicated for the consumer. We need to stick to one message per product, Lena Nyberg states.
When ProViva reached the market in 1994 there were no or a very limited number of food products on the Swedish market that came with a health claim.
- At first our marketing was criticised by authorities because it did not follow current regulation. If a product claim point out to prevent, relieve or cure illness or symptoms of an illness it should by law be registered as a pharmaceutical product. In our sense the product was a beverage and we wanted to promote it like a beverage, just with an added health claim, says Urban Fasth.
The functional food producers on the Swedish market called for support in marketing their products. Serious companies wanted a label on their product to separate them from the less serious players. This resulted in the industries own label, the so called PFP (Product-specific physiological) label, a health claim label authorized by The Swedish Food Federation and administrated by the Sweden Nutrition Foundation(SNF).
- The PFP label has reached out to the academic world and physicians because it state that the products are reviewed by experts and has passed clinical testing. But we had hoped that the label should be as huge success as the Nyckelhålet label (nutritional labelling, red) in Sweden. SNF, has not put any marketing efforts in the label and if the average consumer do not know what it stands for they cannot use it to compare one product to another. It is important to inform the public that there is food that contributes to the general health. As it has turned out, it is impossible to speak of a commercial marketing of the products. It has become too academic, Lena Nyberg stated.
For a small company like Skånemejerier they do not have to please all people all the times to be able to be in the black at the end of the year. It is all about adding the right value to the product and knowing the demand for one or another group of costumers.
- The general trend in the food industry today is products containing Omega 3 fatty acids and products that are organically produced. But you do not need to reach a mass market to have an interesting product. If you take ProViva as an example, it all started with more technical users like patients. After a while the product attracted what you can call lifestyle consumers, concerned about their health in a more general way. This group accounts for ¼ of the Swedish consumers. Together they are enough to base a production line on. For a long time we have seen a low price trend where you win consumers with cheap products, but that is all about to change. To gain market shares today you need a superior product with added value, and last but not least food always needs to taste good, Urban Fasth points out.
Skånemejerier is a perfect example of how a relatively small company can survive in a global economy through new product development and collaboration with outside partners and the academic world. At this very moment the company has begun testing a new cold pasteurization technique that helps to preserve healthy components in milk and juice. The technique is developed by a small Swedish company linked to the University in Lund - a method that highlights Skånemejeriers way of life and success.
