Icon Foods was established in 2008 to fill a void in the retail market for innovative, healthy and convenient foods.
Its focus was initially on imported products, until it noticed an innovative liquid egg product that was finding traction overseas.
Because products containing more than 10 per cent egg can’t be imported, the company decided to build a brand new facility in St Peters in Sydney to make the new egg white-based range.
Three years later, Icon has rolled out three new liquid egg products: cheesy omelette, spinach and feta omelette and a scrambled egg product. They are stocked in Woolworths stores nationally in the egg carton section.
According to Icon Foods CEO Emad Jomaa, the company initially struggled to find an inroad into retail because of the novelty of the category.
“The retailers always talk about innovation, but when something like this comes out of left field, they are cautious,” he says. “We’ve had to create a new category and we call it the liquid egg category.”
However, because of the strength of the category overseas – the liquid egg market is already worth $100 million a year in Canada – the facility has been built with the capacity to supply all the major retailers nationally.
According to Jomaa, who spent many years at Dairy Farmers, Icon Foods is now purely a manufacturing and distribution company.
Jomaa says the processing technology is similar to that used in dairy, but as slightly different processes are involved in fresh pasteurisation of liquid egg products, Icon Foods has aligned itself with a Canadian manufacturer, and as part of the deal, that company is sharing its intellectual property for new product development.
The St Peters plant uses the latest processing and packaging technology to help extend the product’s shelf life, and the company launched its first fresh product, Simply Egg Whites, into Woolworths in March last year.
The three new omelette products are also egg-white based, to capture the healthy convenience market.
“There is no yolk, so that’s where you get the health factor,” Jomaa says. “Consumers like the high protein content but want to stay away from the fat and cholesterol.”
Despite the lack of yolk, the taste and texture of the product isn’t compromised, he says.
“If you taste our scrambled egg product against one made with normal egg, there isn’t much of a difference because we add a natural flavour and colour.”
The company also makes a line of egg white-based protein shakes for the fitness market which it sells into gyms. According to Jomaa, with 45 grams of protein per 500ml, it’s one of the highest protein shakes on the market, and it is the only product that makes use of natural egg whites.
Jomaa says the company is also working on other new products that will be released in the next 12 to 18 months. Some of these new products will be based on egg white, while others will not.
“We are branching out beyond eggs to similar innovative, healthy and convenient products,” he says.
The Puregg omelette uses real egg whites and:
- Is ready to cook, just open and pour
- Is healthier than shell eggs
- Is ready in three minutes
- Serves four per carton
- Has a 45-day use-by date
- Costs $5.95 per carton
