De Lier, The Netherlands
February 6, 2007

With its new Sweet Butter™ blended lettuce salad mix, Fresh Express captured the top spot in US supermarket Top New item sales during the third quarter in 2006 (source: IRI Retail MarketWatch Report of 2.11.2006). Despite the E.coli spinach crisis, US sales were almost $4.5 million in just eleven weeks. One of the significant ingredients in the Sweet Butter™ blended lettuce salad mix is Salanova® (photo right), a totally new generation of multi-leaf lettuce from Dutch breeder Rijk Zwaan.

Remarkable achievement

According to IRI, the launch of Sweet Butter™ was a huge success. The achievement is all the more remarkable in that this Fresh Express Salanova®-based product outperformed major, branded consumer products from companies like PepsiCo Inc., Frito Lay, Campbell Soup Co, Kraft Foods Inc. and Procter & Gamble.

Unique tenderness and texture

The success of this new product is the result of the joint efforts of Fresh Express and Rijk Zwaan to innovate in the fresh-cut category. Fresh Express, since 2006 part of Chiquita Brands LLC and the largest processor in the United States, has been collaborating with Rijk Zwaan for nearly four years now. Fresh Express firstly used Salanova® as important ingredient of the Sweet Baby Greens mix. This new ‘Baby Blend’ was introduced in September 2005.

Jennifer Whittle, Vice President of Innovation by Fresh Express, describes Salanova® as: “A great combination of flavour, texture and quality. This lettuce is unique for its tenderness and refreshing, sweet taste. There is nothing else like it!”

First processable butterhead

Rijk Zwaan’s area manager USA, Wim Grootscholten, agrees. “This Salanova® multi-leaf butterhead lettuce is the first good processable butterhead with a sweet and tender taste which exactly meets the needs of the American consumers. The crisp texture of the leaves gives it a real ‘bite’ and the fantastic colour contrast in the leaves of red Salanova® variety Renoir RZ (photo right) presents the mix very attractively.”

‘One cut, … ready’ lettuce

Salanova® is one of the newest products of Dutch vegetable breeder Rijk Zwaan. Its goal was to create a totally new salad concept for the convenience market the ‘One cut … ready’ lettuce. After years of research and breeding, Salanova®  was born. The Salanova® range consists of various lettuce types which are all easy to prepare. Their uniqueness lies in the many small, ready-to-use leaves once the core has been taken out in one go.