Finding the balance between innovation and the rigid requirements of a food production company is a challenge the managing director of Newly Weds Foods, Calvin Boyle, enjoys.
Calvin Boyle has been at the Australian helm of Newly Weds Foods for the last 14 years. Its ongoing business as well as recent acquisitions drive Boyle’s enthusiasm for the company.
“It’s such an interesting and enjoyable business because we solve problems for customers,” he says. “We either bring new innovations or assist them in reducing their costs through good science. Or, we simply deliver the products efficiently and effectively.”
The company has 16 food technologists who develop products every day. “We develop over six hundred products for our customers every month. Not all of them find their way to a shelf, but there’s a wide mix between great new flavours and interesting ideas to solving a complicated technical question in a coating or in a functional marinade,” Boyle says.
Keeping that innovative culture alive is complicated, because you also need to have quite rigid structures, Boyle says.
“We’re doing a new product for a customer, more than one a day, every day. Some of those are quite simple changes – reducing the sodium level for example, and others are absolutely brand new, different combinations of flavours and functional ingredients.”
There are also rigid processes around the product delivery. That the product matches the sample provided to the customer, the raw materials are consistent and the labelling correct.
Managing that while also allowing risk-taking can be challenging, but Boyle says the company shareholders are hugely supportive from product development to business acquisitions.
