Pringles is launching into the bagged crisps market for the first time in a new attempt to crack the £630m single-serve category.

Pringles Pocket Pack and Rice Infusions Bite Size, mini versions of the standard brands, will be introduced from April, backed by a major ad push.

The £160m Procter & Gamble-owned brand first launched single-serve minis, which came in a tray format, in 2005. However, sales are understood to have tailed off since its first year and the product will now only be available in multipacks.

"This is a sea change away from that first launch. We now want to explode the Pringles brand by breaking out of stacked-crisps-in-a-can into a megabrand," said trade communications manager Paul Lettice.

The Pocket Pack is targeted at a 16 to 26-year-old male audience, with the two top flavours, original and sour cream & onion the first to launch. Rice Infusions Bite Size is aimed at the better-for-you, predominantly female market, aged 25 to 50. The debut flavours are cheese & onion and sweet barbecue spare rib.

A multimillion-pounds TV, radio, press and sampling campaign will kick off in April, running until June.

"This is the brand breaking into different usage occasions," said Lettice. "We'll be continuing with more brand NPD later this year around further new occasions."

Details of listings are still being finalised. However, Lettice added that all the supermarkets where Rice Infusions is stocked would carry the new lines. "We're aiming for the same level of awareness that we achieved with Rice Infusions."

Pringles is also understood to be planning to launch its premium Select brand, already available in the US, in the UK later this year in a direct play for Walkers Sensations market.

Separately, the company said it was still waiting for the outcome of the FSA's research into front-of-pack labelling before deciding on its approach, despite Brussels' proposal last week to introduce mandatory GDAs in three years. P&G said that a GDA label for Pringles was looking "fairly likely" in the shorter term.

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