Kerry Foods is launching the first major piece of NPD for Cheestrings in two and a half years with the extension of the brand into flavoured cheese.

Cheestrings Cheese & Onion and Cheese & Tomato will go on sale in April (rsp: £1.50 for a pack of four). The cheese & onion flavour will be available as Cheestrings sticks as well as in the brand’s Spaghetti format, whereas cheese & tomato will launch as sticks only.

The launches will be supported with a new version of the Cheestrings TV campaign, which features a 10-second add-on highlighting the new variants and will run over the Easter period.

The move into flavoured cheese is the first major NPD initiative for Cheestrings since the launch of Cheestrings Spaghetti in July 2010.

Cheestrings senior brand manager Joao Felix said the Spaghetti sub-brand was now worth £6m and growing 55% year-on-year, adding he was confident the flavoured lines would be as successful as Spaghetti.

“The lunchbox market is worth £185m, but currently only 7% of lunchboxes contain a cheese snack,” he said. “Mums are crying out for healthier lunchbox snacks but craving variety and fun formats - our new flavours can deliver this.”

Felix added that flavour innovation was driving growth in other kids snacking categories - such as yoghurt and crisp snacks - and Kerry wanted to “emulate this” with its new flavoured lines. The Cheestrings brand is worth £43.7m in sales, down 6.2% year-on-year [Nielsen MAT 13 October 2012].

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