MacKnight: No sub for new product accolades

Since 2009, MacKnight Smoked Salmon has captured four top prizes at the International Boston Seafood Show’s Seafood Excellence Awards and European Seafood Exposition’s Seafood Prix d’Elite new product competitions.

However, the popularity of MacKnight’s Bagel Slice — the 2009 Seafood Excellence Awards winner in the retail category — delayed the company from immediately capitalizing on its 2010 win, when the company’s Salmon Bacon was the Seafood Excellence Awards winner in the foodservice category.

In the last 18 months, the Bagel Slice has racked up more than USD 12 million in sales, allowing MacKnight to build a processing plant in the United Kingdom to ramp up production of the Bagel Slice and begin production of the Salmon Bacon.

“With the win in 2009, we targeted the American market and got into the largest club stores and retailers,” said Stephen Nicholson, MacKnight’s director of culinary innovations. “It bogged us down. In the U.S. we did sales of USD 12.7 million of the Bagel Slice. It was doing incredibly well and we didn’t want to drop the ball. With the market still hot to trot with the Bagel Slice, we wanted to exhaust it as much as we could before launching something new into the market.”

Nicholson said the products are so cutting edge it needed to develop plants and equipment to commercially produce it. The company’s UK flagship plant just received a GBP 3.6 million (USD 5.8 million) boost to launch both Bagel Slice and Salmon Bacon in the UK. In addition, a GBP 1.4 million (USD 2.3 million) plant has been completed in Miami to produce Salmon Bacon for the U.S. market.

Salmon Bacon will launch in the U.S. in March, and Nicholson said no exclusives have been given yet, but there is definitely major interest in the product.

“The bacon should pick up where the Bagel Slices left off,” said Nicholson, who said winning the new products competitions was invaluable for a small company such as MacKnight. Salmon Bacon was also the 2010 Seafood Prix d’Elite winner in the foodservice category.

“We are a young company with innovation at the heart of our business. We realize that to compete in an increasingly packed marketplace we have to be creative and come up with something other people don’t have. It’s the driving force behind our business. The seafood shows can be a platform to launch our ideas and further our business,” said Nicholson.

“[Winning the new products competitions] has a huge effect [on business],” he added. “Anyone that would say different doesn’t understand the impact of publicity. When you’re a small company fighting against huge multinationals, you have to have that platform and that voice. It makes a little company have hope.”

While MacKnight didn’t enter a product in the 2011 Seafood Excellence Awards, the company has entered two new products in Seafood Prix d’Elite, the winners of which will be announced in Brussels in early May. The company’s Smoked Salmon Amuse Bouche will compete for the top prize in the retail category, while it’s Atlantic Salmon Infusions will compete in the foodservice category.
 

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