The B2B network of SEKOYA™ manufacturers will launch from early 2023 the LIVIE™ brand, a quality brand on the package (an Ingredient Brand) that aims to distinguish blueberries SEKOYA™, available on the shelf 12 months a year and with a consistently high level of quality.
Explaining the project is Holger Brandt, General Manager of SEKOYA™, who explains, "Whatwe intend to develop is an innovative marketing model that does not want to conflate with other brands, but to complement them. Kind of like what happens with personal computers, which may be from different houses, but have processors from one manufacturer. We have a similar project on blueberries SEKOYA™: the LIVIE™ brand, which will be introduced from early 2023, will go alongside established brands or the distributor's brand already on the packaging. For its part, LIVIE™ will ensure that, inside the package, you will find blueberries high-quality SEKOYA™from one of the four varieties grown by the 14 producers who started this network."
High shelf life, unsurpassed crispness, large gauges and high brix are the main characteristics that distinguish the cultivars produced by SEKOYA™. In addition, the inherent characteristics of the varieties, allow cultivation under different climatic conditions and in more than 30 countries around the world, for a guaranteed supply of 12 months per year.
"In blueberries more than in other references," continues Hans Liekens, Value Chain Manager & Retail Expert at SEKOYA™, " the great difficulty in the past has been in being able to offer a product with high and consistent quality. This has also produced numerous episodes of consumer disaffection. In fact, our research shows that today as many as 50 percent of consumers who buy blueberries say they are disappointed with the quality of the product and, precisely because of this, they stop buying them even for several months. With the LIVIE™ brand of SEKOYA™ now, we intend to change this situation, ensuring a proposal of a high and consistent quality over time. Only those blueberries SEKOYA™ that meet strict quality parameters will then be able to become LIVIE™."
And that's not all. The second major innovation introduced by the LIVIE™ brand concerns the positioning of its blueberries premium, which will be in the healthy snacks segment. This is a truly distinctive initiative, which sees LIVIE™ among the pioneers in this experience with regard to berries, hitherto consumed mainly during breakfast. The healthy snacks category offers much broader possibilities in terms of growth, with size compared to the breakfast segment up to four times larger. In fact, in 2021 the global snack market was estimated to be worth 1,450 billion, compared to 398 billion for the breakfast market.
The philosophy behind this decision is to make LIVIE™ the blueberry for every occasion, suitable for consumption anywhere, anytime. In fact, it is designed to adapt to the busy lives of today's increasingly on-the-go and health-conscious consumers. With LIVIE™ they can "pamper themselves" at any time, even outside of real snack breaks.
Meanwhile, the various steps of the new brand launch project are well defined. From October and until December 2022, SEKOYA™, in collaboration with various partners in European and U.S. retail, will offer an unbranded test phase to bring consumers closer to the world of blueberry. The actual branded test phase, on the other hand, will kick off from January 2023, also supported by an appropriate advertising campaign on various information channels.
"Wealready have several business partners who have believed in this project," Brandt concludes, "but we are of course still open to evaluating collaborations with referents in large-scale retail, partly because we are convinced that the development of berries as a 'superfood' is only in its infancy and still has great potential for development."
