Asda Embarks on Next Phase of Multimillion Food Quality Investment Programme

This latest initiative is part of Asda’s ongoing strategy to drive as hard on quality as it continues to do on price. Last year the retailer invested more than £100m revamping its entire core range of Asda brand food.

5/19/2011 --- Asda announced it was embarking on the next phase of its comprehensive quality investment programme after successfully completing the biggest-ever own label relaunch in UK retailing history.

As part of Asda’s strategy to deliver both value and quality to its customers, the supermarket is now investing a further £27m in enhancing quality across its fresh food business.

There are now three times as many quality assurance inspectors operating in Asda’s depots and supplier farms compared to a year ago, enabling the retailer to significantly increase the frequency of quality control checks in its supply chain.

Asda has also introduced market-leading butchery specifications on all its fresh meat, leading to improvements in taste, tenderness and succulence of key products like sirloin and rump steaks, pork loins and legs of lamb.

In addition, over the last 12 months the retailer has step changed the quality of its fresh produce business following the acquisition of International Produce Limited (IPL) by Walmart.

As a result Asda, through IPL, now has a team of more than 1,000 colleagues based in the UK and countries across the world from which it sources its produce. IPL has also recently extended its remit to Asda’s wine supply.

Andy Clarke, Asda President and CEO, said: “Having successfully completed the rollout of Chosen by you we are now embarking on the next phase of our quality programme. We are investing £27m introducing market-leading quality specifications across all of our fresh meat and produce.

“And through a combination of significantly more quality controls on our farms and in our depots, and by removing unnecessary middlemen along the way, we’ve been able to enhance the quality of our fresh food and keep prices low for customers.”

As part of its commitment to sustainability, Asda now also insists that all the cod and haddock sold on its fish counters and in pre pack, is line caught.

Not only is line caught fishing a more sustainable method as it reduces by-catch and discards, there are also significant quality improvements for customers. Line caught fish is whiter, firmer and ensures a more consistent quality than less sustainable trawler-based methods of fishing.

As a result of the move sales of smoked haddock portions are up by 58 percent, smoked cod fillets are up 43 per cent, smoked haddock loins are up 40 per cent, and undyed smoked haddock fillets are up 34 per cent.

This latest initiative is part of Asda’s ongoing strategy to drive as hard on quality as it continues to do on price. Last year the retailer invested more than £100m revamping its entire core range of Asda brand food. As a result, Chosen by yo is now the fastest growing mid-tier own label brand in the UK.

Chosen by you represents around 80 per cent of Asda’s own label food sales, equivalent to annual sales of between £8-9bn. Since September last year more than 6,500 products have become part of the Chosen by you range on the back of 325,000 independent blind taste tests completed by 53,000 representative UK shoppers in last 12 months.