Save the factory and improve your dietary fiber intake - Roxdale Foods, Roxburgh

Save The Factory And Improve Your Dietary Fiber Intake - Roxdale Foods, Roxburgh

Project 2019-07-06 17:38:28 +1200

Roxdale Foods was known across New Zealand for its canned apricots. A WW2 factory, established in 1942, making food for the troops that evolved into a multi-faceted Central Otago food processor. Under the pressure of foreign competition for its best-selling products the business changed hands and tried to develop new products. It lost its way and slipped into obscurity with a limited processing capacity and a low value product portfolio sold as ingredients, still in many of our supermarket foods but unseen and forgotten.

Two years ago, a group of nostalgic NZ investors took on the challenge to re-invigorate this iconic brand and deliver processed fruit products to local and export markets. As we all know, fruit grown in Central Otago is among the finest fruit in the world. The harvest may be small, even by NZ standards, but the microclimate of the region produces fruit with outstanding taste and colour. Over the last two years Roxdale Foods has developed a product portfolio of retail, wholesale, food service and ingredients products. Broadened its fruit supplies to cover apple, cherries, apricots, blueberries and blackcurrants and is now ready to take this to market, grow sales and build the brand. We now face the challenge of getting re-established in the market and further increasing our processing capabilities, we have a parallel project to start making functional fiber products - including this dried apple fiber.

Many of the staff at Roxdale have been working there for over 30 years, although it has also been a great place to work for casual staff during the summer. We often have people stopping by who worked in the factory when they were growing up in the area or were students in Dunedin 20 or 30 years ago. Roxburgh is a favourite place for young people on working visas to find work whilst they are enjoying their gap year travelling through the South Island. Our aim in turning around the business is to rebuild our permamnent staff levels and provide opportunities for the local community to work on a casual basis during the peak season as well as the foreign travellers. Like any business we need to make a profit but we always want to do this in the context of providing everyone who visits or works with us an experience they will remmeber - the first job, the place they met their partner or the employer that let them raise a family in this uniquely beautiful part of the country.

Roxdale has for the last few years been making apple fiber, this is a dietary fiber product and the only product of its type made in New Zealand. Most of you will know similar imported products branded as dietary fiber in your local supermarket. We have been selling small amounts of our fiber for use in protein powder mixes but have amassed a large stock of dried apple fiber powder. The product is made from the whole apple after extracting the juice. It contains all the goodness of the skins and cores (polyphenols) plus is a source of dietary fiber, about 74% by weight. It can be used as a fiber supplement, added to smoothies and baked goods such as cookies, pancakes, bread, pies as an additive to the flour. This will raise the fiber content and help with your bowel health, also a good filler in foods as part of a weight loss diet. We always advise that it should not be taken neat and if you are increasing the fiber content of your diet it needs to be done slowly starting with 3-4g additonal fiber per day and then increasing to as much as 2-3 tablespoons (again always added to other food or drinks).

We are offering the dried apple fiber in 500g packs at a discounted price for this campaign. We need your support to save our factory and re-launch the Roxdale brand. We are selling Dried Apple Fiber Powder @ $15 for 500g, delivered in NZ for free. In total we have 30,000 kg to sell, our minimum raise is for 12,000kg but we are hoping to raise much more, up to $450,000 by selling all our existing inventory of apple fiber.

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