Pitango Innovative Cuisine whips up another tasty award
Fresh from winning a top export award, North Shore food company Pitango Innovative Cuisine has scooped another impressive title.
The Mairangi Bay family business, which featured in the June 2005 issue of food2Go, has been named the Vector Best Emerging Business in the 2006 Westpac Enterprise North Shore Business Excellence Awards. This latest accolade comes on the back of winning the Air New Zealand Cargo Emerging Exporter of the Year a few weeks earlier.
According to the judges who awarded the Vector Best Emerging Business honour, Pitango is sure to go places. They described it as a company showing a passion and commitment to becoming Global.
“Pitango is destined to be a household name”, they agreed.
Established five years ago by Yasmin and Ofer Shenhav after they arrived in New Zealand in 1999 as backpackers, Pitango was created on the back of their experience with Mediterranean cuisine using quality ingredients.
They started with fresh, organic, homemade-style soups, growing from just two varieties to the present eleven and these have become well established in local supermarkets, where they lead the fresh soup category.
More recently Pitango has moved into hummus, with five exotic dips now in the range.
Pitango products are not only made to traditional Mediterranean recipes, they are also created with healthy eating in mind and are very low in fat.
In addition to selling on the domestic market, Pitango has moved into exports,first the Australia and more recently Hong Kong and Thailand. After a trial with 60 Coles stores and a number of IGA outlets in New South Wales and Victoria, Pitango now sells its products into 430 Coles supermarkets throughout Australia.
Shortly it will begin trial shipments into Woolworths Australia and is also eyeing the Singapore market.
While the Shenhavs still prefer their products to be made in the traditional way – vegetables are peeled by hand prior to cooking – the pair plan to upgrade their production facilities to keep pace with the growth of their business.
But, according to Yasmin, who looks after the company’s marketing, the expansion will not come at the expense of quality, which she insists must remain high.
Reprinted with kind permission from food2Go