From a number meetings with both Woolworths and Coles supermarkets we have found strong demand for our intended retail range of products namely:
1.Albacore tuna hot smoked
2.Yellowfin tuna cold smoked
3.Yellowfin tuna steaks 4 marinated flavours - natural, asian, thai chilli and indian (single serve)
4.As above in double serve
5.Atlantic salmon steaks in 4 marinated flavours natural, asian, thai chilli and apricot.

Both supermarket chains are keen to see the products trialled in each of ten stores in NSW over thirteen weeks. To enable us to meet this demand we are seeking NSC support for the following areas.

1.Determination of shelf life and maximising this shelf life to at least 14 days for selected marinated products. To assist in achieving this a new chemical sanitising agent for direct contact use will be investigated to quantify benefit to shelf life. This chemical will be most likely classified as a processing aid as it is non toxic already approved by The National Health and Medical Research Council NHMRC. Approval is being sought from the ANZFA by the chemical supplier and will be obtained before product launch.

2.Development of a documented HACCP based food safety plan for the processing of the range of Smokin Joes products. This will require consultant input and involve overall audit for the processing area, necessary and appropriate staff training and system documentation.

3.Offset of the cost of production to retail test market stage specifically - the cost of supply and printing of laminate vacuum pouches. The printing is quite expensive involving each of five different product labels being printed directly onto each of the bags. To minimise costs hand stuck flavour labels will be applied to each product. Normally the minimum print run is 20,000 for each product although 10,000 can be obtained at a dearer rate. This operating expense (additional to all the others involved) is more than we can beet at this time. We are meeting new capital equipment costs of $17,000 and other operating costs of well over $100,000 during the course of the test market phase. The packaging is vital to the success of the product as beyond being functional it must assist to influence the customer to purchase.

We have obtained a range of quotes for the packaging and the best is listed below:

Packaging price supplied and printed per 1,000/20,000per 1,000/10,000
smoked albacore tuna $208.82 $313.64
smoked yellowfin tuna $274.87 $375.58
yellowfin tuna steaks (single serve)$220.45 $327.55
yellowfin tuna steaks (twin serve)$227.33 $334.87
tasmanian atlantic salmon steaks$75.00 $120.00
total per 1,000 $1,226.92 $1799.19