Fruit and nut specialist Whitworths has created a new brand to bring "a benchmark in quality" to the healthy snacks market.

Love is a range of fruit and nut bars targeted at 25 to 40-year-old women, especially working mums who want to feed themselves and their families nutritional snacks. Rolling out to Tesco and Somerfield over the next two months, the products will go into other retailers early in the new year.

The range will be supported by a targeted sampling campaign and promotional activity in women's interest media.

The company has been working hard to expand fruit and nut-based products into snacking formats, said marketing director Neil Hepplewhite.

"Whitworths is traditionally a home baking brand and doesn't have the same resonance for healthier snacking," he said.

"It is important to create a new brand that flags up the category. Love will act as a reference point."

The bars were gluten-free, which opened up opportunities for dual siting on the free-from fixture, he added.

"We've been encouraging retailers to site healthy snacks with other snacks," he said. "The category's value is relatively low because of where it is sited; only 2% of people shop the home baking fixture. Yet, our research shows that 40% of consumers snack between meals, 40% would buy fruit and nut snacks if they tasted better, and 35% would buy them for nutritional reasons."

The products - three varieties of fruit and nut bars, which come in packs of three (rsp £2.29) and a trio of fruit-only bars, which come in four-packs (rsp £2.09) - have higher price points than rival products and are smaller in size. However, Hepplewhite claimed they offered better quality and added value.

"We're adding value and driving growth," he said. "Unlike many markets, there has never been a good, better, best approach here and this is one of the challenges going forward."

Other snacks were in the pipeline for the Love portfolio, including different formats, he added.

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