Developing a new stir-fry sauce
Commercialisation
Multiple batch trials were carried out in July 2003. The long delay between single and multiple batch trials was due the lengthy leadtime required to have the pouches made in Japan and shipped to New Zealand.
Multiple batch trials consisted of four batches of each product contained in printed pouches and final outer packaging. The outer packaging was new to the production team as it involved packing 12 pouches into a display case (ready to display on the supermarket shelf), then packing two display cases into an outer shipper (a cardboard box for transporting that protects the pouches and display case). There were issues involving getting all the pouches packed the right way up and facing the front. Multiple batch trials provide valuable information on reproducibility, throughput speeds, yield, and helped confirm specification information. There were no major issues with these multiple batch trials.
From these trials the final product costing was drawn up and signed off by members of the project team. Senior management then approved the product to proceed to full commercial production. Commercial production began in late July 2003 with the multiple batch trial product used as stock for launch.
