Winiary soups in Poland

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 633.

(1) ‘We had a dream of our factory after privatization and that dream has been fulfilled,' says Karol Madrowski, Managing Director at food manufacturers Winiary. His dreams have been realized courtesy of Nestle, which paid around $60 million for a 45 per cent stake (доля/участие в капитале акционерной компании) in Poland's best-known brand producer in 1997. The Swiss company promised to invest a further $30 million and Madrowski's plant, in Kalisz, western Poland, has enjoyed a transformation. By way of an example, he points to a flower bed (клумба) planted where the coal tip had been. ‘We don't need the coal any more as our new energy installation is gas fired and employs 3 where once we had 39 people', he says. Now employees sit watching computers put the right mix of ingredients into Winiary's dehydrated soups and puddings. Once the same people in the same place had dragged (тащить) the same ingredients around by hand. Product quality and hygiene labs have been brought onto the shop floor to communicate to the employees how important these factors are. The red and yellow branding has been modernized so that products are instantly recognizable on shop shelves. And the walls of the plant have been repainted in the same colors to reinforce identification with the product.

(2) Consumers and employees alike are encouraged to come up with new ideas for products and recipes to encourage brand loyalty, a concept alien to (чуждый) the plant's old masters, the central planners. The three-year investment program has consumed $50 million, which is more than Nestle originally promised it would spent on modernizing the plant. This is also more than the $40 million Nestle's rival, CPC Amino (owned by Bestfoods, now part of Unilever), has spent. ‘Poles eat 300 instant soup servings a year', says Nestle's commercial manager. Nestle has been surprised at the size of the market given that instant soups came late to Poland. They were first brought to the market by CPC under their Knorr brand in April 1996. Sales have since grown dramatically, reflecting a society which is working harder and leaving itself less time for meals.

(3) Pre-1995, Winiary had begun to lose market share to CPC and, without privatization, the company would have begun to slide downhill fast. The Nestle investment has brought spending on new equipment and technology, as well as reorganization of the company and development of its distribution and marketing functions. It has invested in people, including MBA-style management training as well as courses in Switzerland, backed by language training.

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