At OV, we love teaming up with our customers to create the next product that makes the difference. And nowhere is this spirit more apparent than in our amazing New Product Development (NPD) Labs, where customers can work directly with our teams to spur innovation and creativity.
To get a real taste of how this works in practise, we’d like to introduce you to the Innovation lab at Candeco, OV Malmo Sweden, where a team of three intrepid developers work with customers to experiment, test ingredients and cook up new creations on a daily basis.
Working alongside our customers, they’ve created hundreds of new products, including an amazing Sichuan pepper flavoured buttercroquant, and another using real gingerbread spice.
SMALL SCALE EXPERIMENTATION
The lab at Malmo is like a miniature replica of the factory around it, allowing experimentation on a bite-sized scale.
Candeco, OV Malmo Sweden Sales Manager Linus Larsson explains: “Here we have the possibility to make every product in small scale, to play around with new ingredients and to test products in application. For example, we have a caramel boiler where we can make smaller batches for experiment.”
Instead of boiling a 40kg batch of caramel as they would in the main factory, the team here can work with 2kg quantities and experiment with all sorts of ingredients and processes.
Linus continues: “There are several advantages to this smaller space. First, we don’t have to take up precious production time to make early tests on the large scale lines. Secondly we are very swift when it comes to putting an idea into practice.”
As well as trying out new flavours, our labs also have the ability to sample products in application, with technology including an ice cream machine, a chocolate machine and a professional oven. This allows you to understand very quickly how products will react and taste in different scenarios.
LETS INNOVATE TOGETHER
At Candeco, OV Malmo Sweden there’s an 80/20 split for creating new products – that means they’re 80% driven by customers and 20% driven by internal innovation.
Linus gave us an insight into the process a customer will usually follow when developing a new product: “The customer usually comes with an idea or a concept. We then explore the options and suggest the product or products we deem best. The customer is either happy with the product, or might want to make some minor adjustments. We can go back and forth a bit with different product versions, almost like a tennis game. If the customer likes the product and wants to buy it, they will receive a final article code and specification, and can then order the product going forwards.”
As a customer, working with us in our innovation lab allows you to:
- explore the possibilities of your product using a tried and tested method
- give instant feedback
- make tweaks immediately.
Please get in touch with us to discuss your next idea, no matter how crazy it might seem!
OV GROUP
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