These are times when shareholders and consumers expect from companies greater transparency and more ethical dealings. Companies with a conscience are de rigueur with investors and customers.

Melbourne’s Unibic is in touch with this sentiment. The niche biscuit manufacturer has since 1999 been in partnership with the RSL in the supermarket sale of ANZAC biscuits. The RSL receives four percent of the product’s wholesale.

“It’s been going for about three and a half years and it’s raised $350,000 so it’s becoming significant,” said Michael Quinn, Unibic’s CEO and part-owner.

Unibic’s community benefit campaign has provided the company with an unexpected outcome: export. In March 2002, Unibic launched a parallel campaign in New Zealand with that country’s RSL equivalent, the Returned Servicemen Association (RSA).

“The Prime Minister of New Zealand launched that on the back of an ANZAC frigate which was a big deal,” Mr Quinn said.

Now the company is preparing to take the ANZAC biscuit beyond its natural habitat. Unibic has signed a contract with the British Commonwealth Ex-Services League and by the middle of 2003 Unibic will be selling the Australian icon in the UK. Prince Andrew has agreed to launch the product and the associated community benefit campaign.
Unibic sees itself as a niche player, but is pleased the ANZAC biscuit will have an export life while maintaining its national integrity.

“We didn’t anticipate we’d be selling product into the UK, but this opportunity with the veterans led us in that direction. In the long term we see it as important that we extend our customer base, that we provide and produce products that our company has specialised skills to do. We don’t see any reason to go into another country with a product that perhaps is already in that country.”

What Australians know as the “ANZAC spirit” is known in the UK as the “Dunkirk spirit”. It is into this British self-perception that Unibic hopes to place the ANZAC biscuit. Mr Quinn says the British have products which are similar to the ANZAC, but the Australian item is unique.

He said the ingredient mix for the ANZAC is different to anything with which the British are familiar, and yet the ANZAC carries a familiar taste for them. Mr Quinn added that the British have found the biscuit’s “uniqueness” appealing and he said UK market research had been very positive.

“Certainly what the ANZAC biscuit is and what the ANZAC spirit is about is very relevant in the UK, but it will need a slightly different kind of marketing to have them fully understand it.”

He said in the UK this will mean educating consumers about how an ANZAC biscuit “should” taste; the company will be focusing on the product’s distinctive flavour as well as promoting the community benefit campaign.

Mr Quinn is strong on the need for Unibic to maintain the biscuit’s Australian identity. There are no plans to change the ANZAC name to suit the British market. He said any product’s export success must centre around a strong reason for being.

“We think the product should carry all the Australianess that it can and that we should try and create it as a brand that is synonymous with not only the veteran community, but also with Australia and New Zealand.”
Unibic has been operating for 45 years. Mr Quinn and his brother Paul have owned and operated the company since 1988. The ANZAC biscuit campaign is not the first time the $25 million company has exported. It also has the Weightwatchers licence and exports that product to New Zealand and South East Asia. In 1999, the company expanded its interests by purchasing Erica, a specialist manufacturer of vol au vents, savoury tartlets, gingerbread and brandy snaps.

“Our company has been built on the notion that the bigger manufacturers leave behind a lot of opportunities because of the scale of manufacturing,” said Mr Quinn, who owned and operated the Original Juice Company before its sale to Golden Circle. “We have similar technology for manufacturing, but on a smaller scale. So we can actually pick up some of those opportunities that may be too small or too fiddly for the bigger guys to do.”

The RSL ANZAC biscuit opportunity emerged from within Unibic. Several staff members are also RSL members. They floated the idea that the company support the RSL by manufacturing the biscuits and selling them in RSL clubs. The idea evolved into the current supermarket scheme.

Unibic based its recipe on the results of a 40-year-old competition run by Woman’s Weekly magazine. “The taste of the product and the texture has been derived from the competition and is broadly accepted as the ANZAC taste. We created an industrial
version of that,” said Mr Quinn.

Unibic now also sells ANZAC biscuits in fundraising packs, doubling the product’s community benefit. With Woolworths, Unibic also helped increase exposure for the RSL’s Remembrance Day. And Unibic has released a biscuit range, Sponge Finger, a percentage of sales from which will go to Starlight Children’s Foundation Australia.

With the ANZAC biscuit’s local and export success, are there any plans for Unibic to launch other Australian icons onto the domestic or international markets?

“It’s possible,” Mr Quinn said. “Our long term plan is to try and provide specialty products for specialty markets . . . That’s the reason for being for our company in this market, and whatever opportunities we see like that we will fully explore.”

However, Mr Quinn reiterated that the company will be strongly protecting the ANZAC biscuit’s integrity, regardless of possible market opportunities.

“We believe very much that a product has got to be true to what it is. We don’t see ourselves extending the franchise of ANZAC into chocolate or anything like that. It’s got to be true to its form as such.”