Yoghurt
Aretsriet 1: Ampleforth 0
Martin Weyer
'I AM IRRITATED,' the Agriculture Min- ister said, as he opened the Ampleforth Abbey yoghurt factory in November 1990, `by all that foreign yoghurt on British supermarket shelves.'
Flanked by beaming Benedictine monks, Mr Gummer went on to try a fruit- flavoured sample for himself — unlike the notorious beefburger which, on a different occasion, he obliged his protesting small daughter to eat on his behalf. 'Excellent!' he pronounced, waving his teaspoon. 'Look at this, a real strawberry.'
He was right; it was excellent. But I have sinister news for him: despite fierce brand loyalty among local consumers, it has disap- peared from our shops, to be replaced by a German rival. Skulduggery at the monastery? A Lutheran plot? Not as far as I know, but an illuminating tale of British enterprise gone astray.
Like many farmers, the monks of Ample- forth in north Yorkshire produced much more milk from their dairy herd than they were allowed by European Community quota regulations to sell. The yoghurt scheme, brainchild of Father Timothy Wright, was a perfect use for the surplus. Advice was sought from the Milk Market- ing Board, which recommended a relatively low-key start-up operation. With the aid of a small grant and some second-hand equip- ment, a plant was established which could process a modest 80,000 litres of yoghurt per year.
To the astonishment of the Ampleforth community, the launch attracted national press attention. Photographs of monks with cows and yoghurt pots appeared in the Times and elsewhere. Weak jokes about 'getting the Abbey habit' abounded. Unpretentiously packaged, the product gained rapid acceptance in the locality. Rural north Yorkshire is a last stronghold of Imperative eaters in the Spectator tradi- tion: if we can possibly avoid it, we accept nothing which has not been grown, shot or baked within a 25-mile radius. Abbey yoghurt was a welcome addition to the diet. It was healthy, being 'live' as opposed to double-pasteurised and inert, and it used a high proportion of whole milk rather than powder. In a blind tasting, it would have been easy to distinguish from insipid mass- production yoghurts, humming with chemi- cal flavouring and stabilisers.
And the marketing value of the monastic connection has long been proven by French liqueurs and cheeses. In Father Timothy's words, it carries connotations of 'wholeness and stability'; and you know it isn't a rip- off. In other words, it is very much a Nineties sort of thing.
So what went wrong? Yoghurt is simple enough to make. The key to success is the lowest possible unit cost to reach the shops, which means full use of capacity and effi- cient distribution, preferably through supermarket chains. But at high levels of production the abbey's second-hand kit proved less than robust, and distribution of small orders to a wide scattering of village shops was expensive. The supermarkets, on the other hand, made very rigorous demands.
Prompted by the Food Hygiene Act, the big stores wanted to see production meth- ods of an almost surgical standard. They wanted the heated cupboards in which fer- mentation takes place to be of stainless steel rather than wood. They wanted the number of movements of the product through the process to be minimised, with pasteurisation of the milk and addition of the yoghurt culture taking place in the same vessel. In effect, they wanted the monks to scrap what they had built and start again.
More consultants were consulted. They implied that the original advice from the Milk Marketing Board had been, to say the least, unfortunate; it had not made suffi- cient allowance for long-term development. A much bolder investment in the first place might well have paid off. Now there was really no alternative but to buy a totally new set of machinery, and to redesign the packaging as well. Supermarket customers want curvaceous pots with glossy pictures of fruit on them, not the plain, white tubs with heraldic crests which the monks had themselves devised.
ESTATE NT Meanwhile, at the other end of the indus- try, the Germans had arrived. The family- owned firm of Molkerei Alois Muller, from the small town of Aretsried in Bavaria, has stormed our high streets in the past five years to become brand leader of the £500 million yoghurt market, knocking aside big- selling French labels like Ski and Danone as well as smaller-selling British ones. Miiller's penetration is so effective that even the editor of this journal, not best known for his Bavarian sympathies, reacted favourably to the mention of its name. It is a triumph of marketing science. Its cleverly differentiated range of products has pio- neered that exciting new challenge for the yoghurt-eater, the separate little container of fruit or honey in the corner of the pot. The name has the power to suggest to us new tastes which we could not possibly have developed for ourselves, like the current Miller advertisement in which, under a catchy if incongruous song called 'I am the captain of this ship', a suave Euro-executive agrees with a suspiciously glamorous tea- lady that what he really wants for his mid- morning snack is a helping of cold rice-pud- ding.
Ah well, you may ask, surely the devalua- tion of the pound against the deutschmark has hit German imports for six? Not at all; most of Miiller's products are no longer actually brought over from Aretsried. Since February this year they have been made in Market Drayton, in a factory employing 200 people and using British milk. That's all right then, isn't it; admirable, in fact. Yes, except that the profits are flowing back to Bavaria.
But there is plenty to play for. In an ever more health-conscious Britain, yoghurt is a market with a long way to go before it catches up with the continent — the Ger- mans eat three times as much of it per head, the French four times. And for that matter, since the pound is now so competi- tive, why shouldn't a British producer become the brand leader in Germany? What insuperable advantage does Aret- sried have over Ampleforth? I cannot even find the place in my atlas. Back at the monastery, live yoghurt is bY no means dead. Although commercial pro- duction is enjoying what we have recently learned to call a moratorium, the monks and their pupils at the famous public school still eat it in quantity. It is a premium prod- uct, thoroughly test-marketed, with unusu- ally low management overheads and brand image proven by centuries of expen- ence. What it needs now is a suitable partner to invest in a re-launch. Any patriotic food tycoon, hoping for a favourable reception at life's final check-out, should see it as a golden opportunity.
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