More than Soft Serve in 4O Years of Frosty Boy
Forty years of growth in a highly competitive market has made Frosty Boy one of the world’s largest beverage and dessert innovators. “Queensland will always be our base – however, we are opening offices around the world,” Frosty Boy’s Managing Director Dirk Pretorius said in the wake of 12 months’ significant market growth.
“We work with many global brands – from providing bespoke, high-end, soft serve creations served in New York through to developing markets like Nigeria, where refrigeration across supply chain and in-store environments is a challenge, and shelf-stable powdered solution is often the only solution.
“We have already opened up five new markets this year. However, our focus will be in the Middle East, Africa, South East Asia and India.”
Back home in Queensland, there has been heavy investment in Frosty Boy’s manufacturing and distribution centre at Yatala in the past five years. “And we have invested a lot more, by recently installing a new packaging line” Mr Pretorius told The Cultivator.
With Frosty Boy’s iconic logo synonymous with soft serve ice cream worldwide, the brand “is strongly associated with fun, comfort and childhood memories”, said Mr Pretorius. “People tell us that when they think about soft serve and Frosty Boy, it brings up memories of ice-cream at the beach and school fete, or when the ice-cream van drives past your house.”
Building on that household name, innovation aligned to global trends has opened up new markets for Frosty Boy, which also provides key beverage and dessert ingredients to make some of the world’s most-loved frozen yoghurt, cold and hot drinks, and slushie brands.
Frosty Boy customers range from global quick service restaurant and food service chains to local and international distributor agent networks and select large independent businesses.
“We work closely with our customers to help them create innovative products and ultimately grow their business,” Mr Pretorius said. He said development of products such as vegan soft serve and Belgian chocolate powder had excited new Frosty Boy customers into further collaboration on product and category strategies.
“We still see strong growth in the soft serve category around product innovation, like plant-based solutions and new flavours,” said Mr Pretorius.
“However, one of our big focuses for the next 12 months is driving our beverage solutions. With strong category growth across the globe for cold crafted café drinks like frappes, this is a huge area of opportunity for Frosty Boy.”
Mr Pretorius said most of Frosty Boy’s relationships were long-term “because we’ve been able to meet the demands of our customers operating in highly competitive markets where product innovation is key to driving sales”. “Once a product is confirmed, our customers also look to us for quality assurance and consistency of supply. So it’s important we are able to replicate product profiles for delivery around the world.”
With consistency and reliability at the heart of Frosty Boy’s commitment to innovation and customer service, Mr Pretorius said it was very important to source Australian-grown and made — such as the Manildra Group sugars that go into Frosty Boy’s frozen yoghurt, soft serve and powdered beverage bases. “Where possible, we always try to use local suppliers for all of our products,” he said.
“As a supplier of quality sugar — a key ingredient in most of our products — Manildra Group is a very important partner to Frosty Boy.
“Our customers across the world are becoming more conscious of food security and we, in partnership with key suppliers such as
Manildra, are able to give our customers and consumers comfort in knowing they are getting quality ingredients in their soft serve and beverage products.
“Just as important is the great service provided by Manildra. If you’re a global brand delivering any product across the world, you need a supplier you can trust to deliver that product exactly the same, no matter where you are.”
Manildra Group Managing Director John Honan acknowledged the innovation at the heart of Frosty Boy’s vision, and success in becoming a global leader in beverage and dessert ingredient supplier.
“Working with the sugar cane farmers of New South Wales to produce our Australian-owned, grown and made ingredients that go into Frosty Boy’s premium products across the globe, we see a strong future in the strength of our partnership,” Mr Honan said.
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