Farm freshness

Founded five years ago in Harrisonburg, Va., Shenandoah Valley Organic, LLC (SVO) is a family-run organic chicken company with a deep-rooted commitment to environmental stewardship and unwavering focus on providing consumers with a healthy, high-protein source of nutrition through the most humane, clean and safe processes possible.

Starting out with a small flock of 300 organically-raised chickens, the company’s founder and chief executive officer Corwin Heatwole is a life-long farmer who spent the early part of his career working for some large integrated poultry enterprises that paid only nominal lip service, at best, to the welfare and well-being of the chickens they raised and slaughtered.

Turned off by the experience, Heatwole bought his first chicken farm in 2005 at the age of 23—eventually turning it into an all-organic enterprise that became a springboard for SVO’s entry to market.

The innovative Cryovac Darfresh tray/skin vacuum packaging system from Sealed Air Food Care is made up of a recyclable food-grade plastic tray that can conveniently be used as a seasoning tray

After starting up a new processing plant in 2014, SVO quickly established a firm foothold in local and regional markets with the company’s Red Wheelbarrow and Blue Ridge Tail brands of chicken raised to the highest ethical and humane standards in the industry.

With consumers quickly rewarding the brands’ socially responsible ethos with sales that exceeded all initial expectations, the company decided to become a 100-percent organic enterprise in the following year.

To mark the occasion in style, SVO proceeded to launch an all-new new Farmer Focus brand of premium fresh chicken products—including whole, wings, drumsticks, thighs and breasts—made from 100-percent organic and free-range birds raised at selected nearby farms sharing SVO’s own high principles and standards for pesticide-free pasture areas, and reduced-density housing.

To validate the brand’s credentials, SVO worked tirelessly to obtain four key trusted third-party certifications—including non-GMO Project, Certified Humane, Global Animal Partnership and USDA Organic—that allow it to use the respective certification labels on its packaging.

As the company’s reputation for high product quality grew, it was able to extend its reach beyond the smaller local groceries to the so-called Big Box retailers.

While moving to larger retailers meant new opportunities, it also meant new challenges in a rapidly growing, fiercely competitive organic U.S. chicken market that has averaged double-digit growth rates over the last five years.

With more than 26,400 certified organic operations nationwide—producing more than 20 million certified organic broilers—U.S. producers sold about US$750 million worth of organic chickens in 2016.

Due to the relatively short production cycle, lower price premium and more integrated production, organic chicken is by far the most widely available organic meat in the U.S. markets—well ahead of both pork and beef.

Moreover, a major recent industry report titled Power of Meat—jointly put out by the American Meat Institute (AMI) and the Food Marketing Institute (FMI)—found that 24 per cent of organic meat consumers cite reduced environmental impact as the main reason for switching to organically produced meat products.

All this adds up to a fiercely competitive market at the retail shelf level—especially so at the Big Box stores, with their strict standards for extended product shelf-life, intolerance for product leaks, and optimized merchandising attributes.

While SVO already had the product quality they needed to compete in the Big Box segment, the company also knew it had to update its packaging to communicate both product quality and recyclability of its packaging to achieve better product differentiation at the crowded shelves.

Happily for SOV, it already gained a lot of useful packaging knowledge earlier in the game by having worked with the Food Care food packaging division of Sealed Air Corporation on its earlier product packaging projects, with very successful results.

As Sealed Air Food Care’s senior marketing manger Sean Brady recalls, “From farm to home, every member of the SVO team is totally committed to delivering products with unbeatable quality.

“This clear focus has been the key driver behind their rapid growth,” Brady adds, “and also the main reason they stand above the competition in the competitive organic market.”

As brand-owner of the widely renowned Cryovac range of meat packaging solutions and technologies, Sealed Air’s own extensive market research reveals that U.S. consumers think more highly of stores (81 per cent) and brands (78 per cent) that help them reduce food waste, with more than half (57 per cent) of consumers also appreciating stores that promote their use of packaging to extend product shelf-life and enhance product quality.

Leveraging those insights with keen understanding of SVO’s needs, budgets and market positioning, Sealed Air worked closely with SVO to identify the recommended Cryovac Darfresh tray/skin vacuum packaging system as the best Big Box solution for the chicken producer’s needs.

In a nutshell, Cryovac Darfesh is a process that utilizes two films to create a vacuum package that has a “second skin” appearance—thereby creating a unique three-dimensional package with a premium look perfect for merchandising.

The Darfresh materials used in this process are highly effective in preserving the color, flavor and integrity of the product that they envelop to deliver extended shelf-life in refrigerator, according to Sealed Air, while providing an easy-to-open package that virtually eliminates the need to touch the product until it is cooked and ready to serve.

Two layers of easy-to-remove film that virtually eliminates the need for the consumer to touch the product until it has been cooked and readied to serve.

According to Sealed Air, some of the Darfresh tray/skin vacuum packaging solution’s most important benefits for the Farmer Focus’s brand include:

• Extended shelf-life (up to 21 days) for case-ready fresh poultry;
• Smaller trays that, unlike foam trays, are recyclable;
• Easy-open, leak proof packages that are freezer-ready;
• Banded-label product that can be labeled as needed—creating greater operational efficiency when producing both private-label and branded products.

Since being launched into the market earlier this year, response to the Cryovac Darfresh tray/skin vacuum packaging has been overwhelmingly positive from retailers large and small.

As SVO’s vice-president of sales and marketing Jack Coleman relates, “People we showed it to have largely responded, “That’s exactly what I’m looking for!

“The smaller trays give retailers a more consistent product with longer shelf-life and reduced shrink,” Coleman says, “while the vertical display capabilities allow retailers to stock more in a case and reduce restocking frequency.

“In fact, retailer adoption has set a new pace record us,” he adds.

“We’ve never had a product that was met with such overwhelming acceptance,” says Coleman, citing an almost fourfold increase in retail sales.

According to Coleman, SVO’s new packaging is delivering the quality perception that organic shoppers look for when choosing their products.

Not only do shoppers get an unobstructed 360-degree view of the chicken product, says Coleman, but the reduction in physical packaging and elimination of soaker pads resulted in less overall waste and better recyclability.

As a result, “We are gaining new customers as well as increasing repeat shoppers,” Coleman states.

According to SVO’s executive vice-president of sales and marketing Jefferson Heatwole, the instant success of the new packaging format almost caught the company off-guard.

“We knew it was a success waiting to happen,” he says, “but we didn’t anticipate the rapid ramp-up in sales and struggled to keep up with the demand.”

Once again, the Sealed Air tem quickly sprang into action, helping SVO restructure its inventory planning to ensure faster delivery of both trays and the clear packaging film.

“We were very pleased with the Cryovac team’s response to our inventory issues and their assistance in getting trays and film in so we could keep up with demand,” Heatwole states, adding that the stellar success of the new packaging has already more than offset the cost of new equipment.

Says Heatwole: “As we look at expanding their product offering down the road, we will continue to partner with Sealed Air to get the best packaging solutions in place right from the start.”