At the beginning of the development process we only need a few of our new chocolate bars, so we make them in our Pilot Plant. But that’s no good when you need to produce 8 million of them.
So we have to work out how the new bar will be made on a grand scale – what equipment we’ll need, where it’s going to come from, how much it’s going to cost, how many people it will take to run it. It’s a huge investment so we only buy new machinery once we’re certain our new product is going into mass production.
Once everything’s in place, it’s full steam ahead.
Cadbury introduce something like 100-200 new products a year. A lot of them will be special variations of brands you already know and love, like the new Dairy Milk Apricot Crumble, and Dairy Milk Cranberry and Granola bars. And around eight of them will be totally new to market. So it’s always worth keeping an eye out when you’re in the newsagent or at the supermarket.
And that’s it. Now you know just about everything about how Cadbury come up with new products for this year, next year and the year after that.
So what’s the next exciting new product you’re going to see? Sorry, we can’t tell you, it’s top secret! But sign up to our newsletter and you’ll be the first to know.