A guilt-free taste of Greece

UNISMACK I PROFILE

Greek snack manufacturer Unismack is on a mission to change the face of snacking. Armed with a catalogue of healthier snacks, the company promotes ‘better for you’ snacking through its delicious, unique portfolio of baked snack products.

Featuring unusual ingredients and flavours like lentils, hummus, chickpeas and others, its products are surprisingly healthy for a segment better known for its indulgence. Unismack’s management team met with Richard Hagan to talk about the company’s pioneering products, techniques and philosophy.

UNISMACK I PROFILE

Unismack, based in Greece, manufactures a range of delicious baked snacks – both under its own inhouse brands and also in the form of white-label products for customer brands.

The company’s standard range consists primarily of a variety of cracker-type snacks. These range from familiar snack flavour profiles like cheese, to less familiar ones like hummus, ancient grains and lentils.

Its products all comply strictly with Unismack’s tagline, ‘Better for you’. Broadly speaking, this means that its range is baked rather than fried, and all of it is preservative-free, free of artificial flavours and colours, and also free of all allergens including wheat, gluten, egg, soy, nuts and sesame (except dairy). A complete range of vegan snacks and crackers is also proving popular.

Snack on some history

The business was established in 2008 by brothers Dimitrios Stratakis (CEO) and Alex Stratakis (Innovation Director). The two aimed to continue and build on their father’s legacy of creating and operating one of the biggest traditional bakeries in Greece.

But rather than taking the easy route of producing the typical industry fare of delicious baked goods that typically come with hefty calorie, fat and salt levels, the two set off on a mission to harness the family’s extensive baking know-how of baking to pioneer a range of snacks that were actually healthy, and could safely be eaten on a regular basis. Their strategy was a success as the orders soon started arriving.

“We launched in the UK and were exporting our Cheese Ups product

Dimitrios (L) & Alex (R) Stratakis Dimitrios Stratakis – CEO Alex Stratakis – Innovation Director

UNISMACK I PROFILE

there within a year of starting up,” revealed Dimitrios.

By 2011, Unismack had established its first in-house brand called Wellaby’s, and two years later began shipping its lentil and chickpea crackers. Less than five years after that, the business launched its vegetable and vegan snack range.

Not content to sit on its haunches, Unismack is actively pursuing further expansion. The company is in the midst of a three year, €10 million investment program that will see production capacity double as well as securing its entrance into the pretzel and biscuit markets.

“We’re positioned as the house of snacks,” said Dimitrios. “There’s lots of room for innovation in the category.”

A recent example of its ongoing innovation is the launch of one of its newest products, the Mediterranean Snack Collection.

“It was an immediate hit with our distribution partners,” declared Strategic Development Director, Sue Warren. “It delivers an authentic range showcasing the best of the Mediterranean culture, with ingredients sourced from across the region and paired with the finest worldwide flavours for a real Mediterranean experience.”

Perfectly baked expansion plans

Unismack operates from a single, 6,000sqm facility in Greece. Its 130 employees operate the company’s three production lines that together produce 8,000 tonnes of product annually for partners across the globe, including the US, the UK, Australia and South Africa.

Its newest production line is geared towards the production of pretzels and is expected to be a major driver of the company’s near-term growth.

“The line is quite flexible,” explained Alex Stratakis. “It combines different technologies such as a rotary moulder as well as extrusion, sheeting and lamination technology. By changing out parts of the line and playing around with combinations, we can produce lots of different products using the same equipment.”

That flexibility is expected to deliver Unismack’s upcoming pretzel line as well as to open doors for it to enter other product categories such as laminated crackers, which is something its current range lacks.

Healthy snacks for healthy habits

Dimitrios explained that Unismack finds itself successfully riding a wave of consumer interest in healthier snacking, added to a renewed interest in food quality and ingredients.

“While there’s a higher interest in healthier products, there’s also an interest in exploring new flavours,” he said. “What we’re seeing now is that consumers no longer simply accept a generic flavour –they want provenance from it. They want to know what the flavour is, where it’s from – which country/region – and who makes it, as well as how.

“The huge popularity of cooking shows has a lot to do with that because they’re educating consumers,” he added. “And Covid, of course, has increased our awareness of dietary health and overall health, in terms of what we eat, as well. It makes for an interesting product development process.”

The company is also focused on ensuring that its products are able to integrate with

popular diet regimes, and according to Dimitrios, consumers are becoming increasingly educated regarding their diets.

“Consumers no longer just accept generic terminology regarding their diets,” he emphasised. “You’ve got Keto that is very strong in the market and the Mediterranean diet which is trending. Consumers are following these diets and they want information from us about how our products affect their programs. They want to know what things mean, how many carbs are in the product, is this compatible with the Mediterranean diet, and so on.”

Alex’s work, meanwhile, has been highly focused on ensuring that Unismack’s products are fully compatible with these and other diet regimes, from both a scientific and nutritional perspective.

“When you combine the consumer’s overall needs to still snack during the day, we’re the ones that combine both their need to snack and their dietary restrictions,” said Alex. “We authentically service specific diet needs.”

Unismack’s sales figures offer the perfect evidence that the company is successfully hitting those consumer demands, according to Ms Warren.

“The demand for our core focus of ‘healthier’ and ‘better for you’ great tasting snacking continues to drive high growth volume. Despite the significant impact of Covid on global markets, we have seen our volume more than triple over the last five years.”

Its vegan range and its vegetable range are seeing continued strong demand and thanks to consumers trending away from meat, the company expects that demand curve to continue upwards. Meanwhile, “our current best seller is a cracker made from cauliflower,” revealed Dimitrios.

Another strong product is a unique cheese snack made from various, local cheeses. “It contains feta, haloumi and other cheese provenances,” explained Dimitrios. “We use these provenances because they’re usually more expensive but they’re also more authentic and consumers are looking for that. At the same time, it’s delicious. It has few ingredients and it has a great nutritional profile high in protein.”

Investing in innovation

To keep Unismack at the forefront of its snacking revolution, the company has made a substantial investment into building its brand new innovation hub. The facility, which is expected to be ready for use by the end of 2022, will significantly accelerate and diversify Unismack’s product development cycle.

“We don’t want to be just another snack manufacturer,” Dimitrios highlighted. “We want to build our vision to create the next generation of snacks and genuinely offer something different. The proof is in what we’re doing with this investment – you don’t see innovations hubs in standard snack manufacturing operations.”

Outside of this huge investment into its new innovation hub, the company is engaging in a significant expansion. This will see its production and warehouse space increase by 2,000sqm as well as the addition of a new production line.

In closing, Dimitrios emphasised the company’s ethos and the role that its insistence on high standards have played – and will continue to play – in its success: “We’re the only company that combines innovation, capability and allergen-free production. You may find other manufacturers that have one or the other, but not all three.”

“We’re also adamant about working with strong partners who supply high-quality ingredients with specialised characteristics. Without strong partners, especially from a supplier perspective, we cannot succeed. We’re not dealing with materials and processes that are mainstream commodities.”

He concluded: “The quality and the excellence we’re known for are not just about delivering a good product: It’s a long-term mentality and a constant way of working.n