Comprehensive Business Strategy Report: Hubbard’s Food Ltd. Analysis

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Hubbard's Food Ltd., a New Zealand-based breakfast cereal manufacturer. It begins with an executive summary and introduction, then delves into the company's growth and business environment, including its competitive landscape within the FMCG industry. The report outlines Hubbard's business strategies, including its focus on quality, corporate social responsibility, and shareholder engagement. A detailed SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) and PESTEL (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, and Legal) analysis are conducted to assess the company's internal and external factors. The report concludes with a discussion of Hubbard's evolution, its market position, and a suggestion for diversification to promote further growth. The analysis covers the company's history, its response to market competition, and its strategies for sustainability and stakeholder engagement. The report provides a solid overview of the company's business operations and strategic decisions. The reference section includes relevant academic sources.

Running head: BUSINESS AND STRATEGY OF HUBBARD’S
BUSINESS AND STRATEGY OF HUBBARD’S
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1BUSINESS AND STRATEGY OF HUBBARD’S
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
New Zealand has a small yet compact, competitive and potent FMCG industry owing to the
growing local needs as well as exports that it encounters to cater international demand.
Hubbard’s is one such food manufacturing company that is operating for three decades
almost and the growth trajectory of the company captures various phases it has gone through
to gain establishment and further strengthening of consumer base in the business. The paper
summarizes the survival story of Hubbard’s and the transformation it brought over the years
and services it provided to the society infiltrated through business and expansion of it. To add
to the further future growth of the company introduction of diversification strategy has been
suggested as it can help the brand attract more consumer of local as well as international
market and gain wider popularity.

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TABLE OF CONTENT
INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................3
DISCUSSION AND ANLYSIS OF GROWTH........................................................................3
BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT AND IMPACT.........................................................................4
BUSINESS STRATEGY...........................................................................................................5
SWOT ANALYSIS................................................................................................................6
PESTEL ANALYSIS.............................................................................................................7
CONCLUSION..........................................................................................................................9
REFERENCE...........................................................................................................................10

3BUSINESS AND STRATEGY OF HUBBARD’S
INTRODUCTION
Breakfast cereals and food products are important component in Fast Moving
Consumer Goods industry reflecting greater demand basket of core population.
Manufacturing of food products in scientific method and deliverance ensure quality and
quantity to serve mass with the core necessity of life (West, Ford and Ibrahim 2015).
Discussion is presented in report format on how the company, Hubbard’s Food Ltd. came
into existence and thrived sustainably over years.
DISCUSSION AND ANLYSIS OF GROWTH
Hubbard’s Food Ltd. is an eminent brand for manufacturing of breakfast cereals in
New Zealand. Specifically Auckland based, the company started off the remarkable journey
of food supply business in the year of 1988 with the name Winner Foods founded by Dick
Hubbard. Within 20 years of inception, the company managed a turnover of NZ$38 million
with third highest market place after the brands like Sanitariums and Kellogg’s. The products
of the company solely concentrate in ready to eat breakfast cereal items. Popular items
among consumers include Fruitful Lite, Berry berry Nice, Berry Berry Lite, Amazing Muesli
and Light & Right available in range of flavours (Rosenbaum-Elliott Percy and Pervan 2015).
The manufacturing process has conferred employment to 128 people by the end of 2008
(James 2015). The founder, the long term work experience of Dick Hubbard who started as
food technologist at a tropical fruit factory on a Pacific island and later as general manager of
local food manufacturer encouraged him for the start up in food industry generally aimed to
produce bulk of cereals for supermarket sale. The initial years till 1992 financial hardship has
been part and parcel and the destiny took turn with introduction of muesli that helped the

4BUSINESS AND STRATEGY OF HUBBARD’S
company gain much popularity with huge amount of sale at supermarkets. From 1993 the
growth of the company was visible in form of the outlet expansion and stuff recruitments to
assist the business. The expanding demand created impetus to set up new factory at Mangere,
Auckland. In the year 2001, the company had board of directors to consider and deal with the
interests of stakeholders. The production strategy that was undertaken by Hubbard’s was
focused on technology mostly operated by human than totally depending on machineries
(Armstrong et al. 2014). The morale behind such decision was to perform social
responsibility towards local people creating and encouraging employment.
BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT AND IMPACT
From the very beginning the company faced challenges mostly financial and problems
of brand recognition among the already established brands taking over the chunk of market
share. The products having the root in fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry
encountered much of local as well as global threats from the advent of 2000. The structure of
FMCG market in New Zealand is highly erratic and competitive within the sub domain of
breakfast cereal markets having low margins that is offset by prodigious supply chain.
Moreover the taste and preference of consumers differ based on seasonality which predicts
demands to be high by 10% in summer than in winter. Moreover the existence of rival brands
like Kellogg’s, Sanitarium and Uncle Tobys who also acquires top position in market creates
much more market competition for Hubbard’s. Sanitarium is New Zealand based company
having existence of 100 years so far (Hinton and Hamilton 2013). Their products include
cornflake, weet-bix which have strong focus on philosophies of healthy living and
vegetarianism that enable it to capture huge market share both in cereals bar market as well as
breakfast-in-drink market.

5BUSINESS AND STRATEGY OF HUBBARD’S
Sanitarium and Hubbard’s almost have same production inputs that can be used as
perfect substitute of each other in cases of emergency or shocks in availability that further
creates a competitive atmosphere between the entities. Other two brands have their roots in
Australia. Kellogg’s originated in 1920 and has large market power in both Australia and
New Zealand where it gives competition to popular brands like Coco Pops, Special K and
Nutri-Grain. Uncle Tobys on the other hand specializes more on breakfast cereals and some
the products like Vita Brits; Fruity Bites have greater influence in cereal bar market (Devi et
al. 2014). The company now offers 12 kinds of different toasted muesli once started only
with simple oat bran muesli. Other than muesli, product lines include bran flakes and oats
cereals. The products are gluten free, includes flavour of fruits that are grown both in New
Zealand and tropical countries. The brand provides manufacturing and supply to few super
market private brands that offers rice puffs and cornflakes at low price and such is excluded
from their competition scale. The maintenance of quality along with variety in list of items
that Hubbard’s produce, help the brand gain consistent differentiation in the products
compared to the established competitors. This further consolidated the brand among
consumers creating popularity and brand faith.
BUSINESS STRATEGY
To survive and sustain, Hubbard’s continued the core strategy of providing higher
quality of goods without any compromise along with promoting and maintaining corporate
social responsibilities. Dick Hubbard initiated New Zealand Business for Social
Responsibility (NZBSR) in the year 1998 which is one of the founding members of New
Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development (NZBCSD). The company focused
on evoking sustenance of mind, body soul among the people associated with the brand. It
successfully conducted campaigns that call for waste management and eradication

6BUSINESS AND STRATEGY OF HUBBARD’S
enlightening both employees and consumers as whole. It involves in recycling of papers,
aluminium and plastic containers, plastic wraps, cardboards toner cartridges and so on..
Another remarkable strategy adopted by the brand is vast base of shareholders that include
employees, customers and wider community along with various financial investors. The
authority keeps the shareholders base intact as well as growing by sharing the profits among
them and also local schools, non profit organisation and community organizations. The
informal communication atmosphere within employees and between management and
employee prevents collision and conflictions of perception (Kumar and Reinartz 2012).
This consolidated and growing faith upon the brand can further be taken into new
level in form of higher growth and expansion of the business if the company adopts
diversification of the products line it currently has (Grunert and Traill 2012). The popularity
it has already earned by providing quality in breakfast cereals can now be channelized into
creating new business in the market. It can introduce various other FMCG food items like
dried fruits, fruit juice, bakery and confectionary products, biscuit, cookies and chocolates
(Thain and Bradley 2014).
SWOT ANALYSIS
SWOT analysis describes the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to
assess the business as a whole. Thus, the SWOT analysis of Hubbard is as follows:-
Strengths-
 The product highly delivers brand recognition and its innate quality provides it some
greatest advantage.
 Based on the benefits of the cereals they sell their strength is its nutritional value.
Weaknesses-

7BUSINESS AND STRATEGY OF HUBBARD’S
As we know in these types of food related companies any strength can be its biggest
weakness. However, its main weaknesses are those areas of the product that the company
need to address properly and work on that part to get it eliminated as soon as possible. Thus,
with the growing competitions and different tasty cereals in the market, Hubbard should
come up with more tasty and variety of cereals.
Opportunities-
 Change in consumer’s preferences can be its weaknesses. They must keep a tract that
how customers are consuming their products.
 The competitor’s weakness also adds as an opportunity in these kinds of businesses.
Threats-
 The external markets are its biggest threats that can possibly harm the demand of the
product of this company.
 The change in the preferences of the customers, the growing strengths of the
competitors and chance in the economy can all be threats to this business.
PESTEL ANALYSIS
PESTEL analysis is used to analyse the external marketing environment that has an
impact on the organization. However, P denotes the political, E denotes economic, S for
social, T for technological, E for environmental and lastly, L for legal factors affecting the
business. Thus, the PESTEL analysis of Hubbard is as follows –
Political factors-
Political factors are basically those were the influences on the business. Therefore for this
particular industry-

8BUSINESS AND STRATEGY OF HUBBARD’S
 Free trade arrangement
 The standards of the labours in the developing countries
 Regulations on the organic and genetically modified organisms
(GMO) food
Economic factors-
 Stability of the economic condition of the country
 Higher rate of employment
 The increasing cost of labours in the counties those are developing
Social factors-
 The growing emphasis on the healthy lifestyles of the population in New Zealand
 Expansion of cultural diversity in the country
 Enlarging gap in wealth among the people
Technological factors-
 There is an expansion in the automation in this business
 With the growing time there is an increase in the usage of the mobile technology
 An invention of GMOs
Environmental factors-
 Global warming or any changes in the climate
 Waste disposal
 More emphasis on the business sustainability
Legal factors-
 Environmental protection law

9BUSINESS AND STRATEGY OF HUBBARD’S
 Antitrust law
 Insufficient laws of labour.
CONCLUSION
Tracking the timeline of Hubbard’s existence it is evident that the company
underwent different stages in the business life cycle through past 29 years. The company has
been able to achieve huge market share in the breakfast cereal market even amidst the
presence of numerous competitors due to the adopted business strategies combined with
philosophies catering to social responsibilities.

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REFERENCE
Armstrong, G., Adam, S., Denize, S. and Kotler, P., 2014. Principles of marketing. Pearson
Australia.
De Mooij, M., 2013. Global marketing and advertising: Understanding cultural paradoxes.
Sage Publications.
Devi, A., Eyles, H., Rayner, M., Mhurchu, C.N., Swinburn, B., Lonsdale-Cooper, E. and
Vandevijvere, S., 2014. Nutritional quality, labelling and promotion of breakfast cereals on
the New Zealand market. Appetite, 81, pp.253-260.
Grunert, K.G. and Traill, B., 2012. Products and process innovation in the food industry.
Springer Science & Business Media.
Hinton, M. and Hamilton, R.T., 2013. Characterizing high-growth firms in New Zealand. The
International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, 14(1), pp.39-48.
Hjort, K., Lantz, B., Ericsson, D. and Gattorna, J., 2013. Customer segmentation based on
buying and returning behaviour. International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics
Management, 43(10), pp.852-865.
James, C., 2015. New Territory: The Transformation of New Zealand, 1984–92. Bridget
Williams Books.
Kumar, V. and Reinartz, W., 2012. Customer relationship management: Concept, strategy,
and tools. Springer Science & Business Media.
Rosenbaum-Elliott, R., Percy, L. and Pervan, S., 2015. Strategic brand management. Oxford
University Press, USA.

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Thain, G. and Bradley, J., 2014. FMCG: The power of fast-moving consumer goods. First
Edition Design Pub..
West, D.C., Ford, J. and Ibrahim, E., 2015. Strategic marketing: creating competitive
advantage. Oxford University Press.