Greenridge starts production facility upgrades to go after pre-sliced meat market

18-Oct-2023 - Last updated on 18-Oct-2023 at 18:08 GMT

Image Credit: Greenridge

Related tags Meat Meat snacks deli meat

Midwest meat producer Greenridge is expanding into the pre-sliced segment with new production capacity and a new brand identity, company SVP of sales and marketing Mike Shannon, told FoodNavigator-USA.

“I think customers want the convenience of product being pre-sliced as well as the freshness of it, and stores are constantly combating increases in labor costs,” Shannon said. “There's a real need to make things easy for the consumer.”

Expanding capacity to fuel meat innovation, rebranding to focus on ingredients

Started in 2008, Greenridge is a European-style natural artisanal meat and cheese producers that offer low-sodium and free-from (MSG, gluten, soy, nitrates, phosphates, and artificial colors) deli meats, sausages, and meat snacks. The company also went through a rebrand earlier this year changing its name from Greenridge Farm to just Greenridge to better convey its proposition to consumers, Shannon said.

“To keep up with trends and what's going on in the branding space, we really wanted to just give ourselves a clean, sleek, modern look and simplify our branding and our packaging...That will bring us to what customers are looking for today and really allow us to focus on what's good about our product.”

In addition to the rebrand, Greenridge is “tripling the size of [its] current production facility,” which will allow it to enter into new product categories, namely the pre-sliced meat space, Shannon said. The first part of the facility expansion is underway, and the second phase of the expansion will be finished in 2024, he added.

“We have broken ground this year on a part of the extension that'll give us the ability to add pre-sliced products into our mix and a lot more convenience in our packaging.”

Growing in deli meats, meat snacks

Greenridge also sees an opportunity in the meat snack space, as consumers look for better-for-you snack options with higher protein content, Shannon said. The global meat snacks market is expected to be worth $13.16bn in 2023 and expected to reach $20.40bn by 2028, growing at a 9.16% CAGR, spurred by on-the-go protein snacks in North America and new flavor combinations, according to a Mordor Intelligence report.

“We think snacking is a huge opportunity because it's just the way consumers eat. There's more smaller meals; people are a lot more educated on the bonus of having protein in their diet, and people are looking for lower sodium alternatives to what's out there.”