The most important and the most challenging aspect of keeping at the forefront of great flavours at Flavourfresh is New Product Development (NPD). As flavour pioneers, our technical and production teams are on a never-ending quest for produce perfection.
Global search for flavour
Our NPD team have travelled around the globe from Europe, across Africa and the Far East, looking for and evaluating new tomato varieties, assessing their flavour and selecting potential for home trials.
Commercially grown around the world both for fresh harvest and for the processing market, the holy grail of tomato treasure is a huge investment and commitment.
Each year at Flavourfresh we evaluate up to 250 new varieties in this quest.
Select, trial, evaluate and test
The process evolves from initial evaluation at their first flush of growth, monitoring – above all else – flavour, plus other characteristics affecting their commercial viability.
At this early stage, 99% of trials will be discontinued – only a select few will make the cut to commercial evaluation stage.
The Select Few
Assessing growth alongside our long season crops then allows for deeper evaluation of all aspects of the varieties’ potential: Flavour, fruit quality, shelf life, disease-resistance and yield potential.
Taste tests by the technical teams are followed up by more intense field research, with customer taste-testing and discussions on the viability of each new line. In-store taste tests have proved invaluable in reinforcing the validity of the ultimate variety selections.
This process can take on average up to four years from first test to commercial production to store launch – and it’s worth the wait.
