Goodman Fielder has invested approximately $15 million in an artisan bread plant in Erskine Park, Sydney, with an eye to growing its bakery business in different channels.
The plant includes stone-lined ovens to improve bread crust texture and commercial mixers that create ‘stress-free dough’, with the capability of producing a broad range of batards, baguettes, ciabattas and rolls.
The company hopes that the investment will open up opportunities in the food service and QSR sectors, and the supermarkets’ instore bakeries in the short term, and hot bread shops in the longer term.
Pankaj Talwar, Goodman Fielder’s managing director of baking, revealed that the company holds a 45 per cent share of bakery sales in the grocery channel, including private label, which is valued at around $1.7 billion in Australia. However, if you include sales from in-store bakeries, food service and hot bread shops, the category is worth $4 billion and Goodman Fielder only has a 19 per cent share.
These channels, he said, provided Goodman Fielder with “tremendous opportunities” for growth. “We’re not even close to saturation,” he said.
Bakery is Goodman Fielder’s largest business and it currently operates 28 bakeries in Australian and New Zealand, several of which are “in a state of disrepair”, according to Talwar. He added that the company is aiming to have “fewer, bigger bakeries” in order to optimise its footprint.
Mid 2012, Goodman Fielder announced it would close its bakeries in Rockhampton and Cairns in Queensland, and its Whiteside bakery in Melbourne, at the costs of 115 jobs.
