Shredded Wheat will become the first cereal to carry the Red Tractor logo from the end of this month in an effort to flag up its commitment to home-grown wheat to consumers.
Parent company Cereal Partners UK will put the Assured Food Standards tractor logo on the whole Shredded Wheat portolio, which also includes the Bitesize and Bitesize Organic variants.
However, its other brands, such as Shreddies, Cheerios and Fitnesse, will be unable to use the logo as, unlike Shredded Wheat, they do not have one single main ingredient.
CPUK marketing director Dez Timmiss said it had sourced UK wheat for the past 40 years for the brand and now planned to communicate that commitment to consumers. "With growing consumer interest in provenance and local sourcing, the Red Tractor symbol reassures consumers, as well as enabling them to support British farming," he added.
It will become one of a handful of branded products to use the logo, following butter brand Country Life, which first used the mark in 2004. Silverspoon, Allinson and long-life milk brand Moo followed suit in 2005, and Cravendale, McCain Foods, Bernard Matthews and Cathedral City started putting the logo on packs this year.
CPUK buys UK wheat grown under the Assured Combinable Crops scheme - a subsidiary of AFS. To qualify for the Red Tractor scheme, a product must also be packed in the UK.
AFS chairman Colin Smith said CPUK complied with the strict standards of production and provenance for its whole grain.
The Red Tractor scheme came under fire last month after Defra research found that only 16% of people recognised the logo. However, a conflicting MORI survey for British Chicken Marketing found that half of consumers recognised it.
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