Mr Kipling has moved into fresh cakes for the first time as part of Premier Foods' plans to breathe new life into its older brands.

It has rolled out a three-strong range of chilled cakes into Asda and will be moving its Ambrosia brand into the breakfast market next year with the launch of porridge products.

The move into chilled cakes comes in the wake of jibes that Mr Kipling, which slipped 1.1% by value to £178.1m last year [Nielsen 52w/e 26 December 2010], had failed to move with the times. Last December, Asda bakery category director John Cummins said the brand "wasn't moving as fast as the market" and warned that fresh products would start to steal shelf space from ambient.

Mr Kipling's first fresh offerings are cake slices containing frangipane filling in three variants: apricot & almond, raspberry & almond and apple & blackberry (rsp: £1.99). They will be exclusively available in Asda until December.

"We're putting our toe in the water but we intend to bring out lots more products in this area," said Premier Foods brand director of cake Michelle Wilde. "As a brand, Mr Kipling can do lots of traditional products fresh, for example crumbles, tarts and pies things strongly associated with its brand heritage."

The company is continuing to expand the Mr Kipling ambient cake range by launching snap packs of its Angel and Lemon slices (rsp: £1.45). It is also launching a new sponge pud range in August its brand debut in puddings.

Meanwhile, Premier said it would use Ambrosia's expertise in dairy and grain to move the brand into ready-to-eat and ready-to-heat porridge pots. "There are a lot of [dried] products out there that you boil a kettle to eat that don't deliver the same quality," said Michael Gillane, brand director of desserts. "This has the dairy, milk and oats and is ready to go 60 seconds out of the microwave."

The company planned to invest up to £15m in the Devon Ambrosia plant over the next year, it said.

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