Flora Spreads

After five years of impressive sales growth, which took the Unilever-owned brand from £120m to over £180m, Flora's sales dipped by 0.7% last year to £184.3m.

And it was displaced by Lurpak as the biggest player in butters and spreads.

Nevertheless, Flora and its cholesterol lowering brand pro.activ, is still ranked as the 21st largest grocery brand.

And, it is on a mission to re-educate the consumer about heart health.

Flora pro.activ brand manager Judith Bruins says: “Where we are seeing some slow down is in the mini drinks market, which is impacting on our sales.”

Bruins say the downturn is effecting its pro.activ and Omega 3 mini drinks and is being driven by consumer confusion as to what the different products actually do.

“One of the key tasks we have as a brand is really giving more education to consumers in terms of what the products do,” she says.

“In 2008 we are going to shout about our cholesterol lowering products and bring consumer clarity. As a retail brand we are really on a mission to make people heart healthy.”

And, with regard to being overtaken by a rival, Flora is keen to set the record straight.

“There's a misconception that butter is healthier because it's natural,” says Bruins. “Butter contains a lot of saturated fats which are not as good for your heart.”

In order to spread the word, Flora launched a new TV campaign for pro.activ in February and in March will be offering a free cholesterol and health check for every consumer who buys two packs from across the pro.activ range.

According to Bruins, this will follow on from work on the core Flora brand at the end of last year, which highlighted the benefit of Flora as part of a diet due to its seed and oil mix.

“We are going to be spending a lot of time educating because we are really passionate about heart health,” says Bruins. “33% of adults have a saturated fat intake that's more than the GDA – we are going to take that on and start talking about it.”

2007 £184.3m
2006 £185.6m
yoy change -0.7%