Mrs. Iwona Szklarska, Member of the Management Board of the Chrzanowska Manufaktura Wędlin [Chrzanów Manufactory of Cured Meats], interviewed by Małgorzata Martini.
What was the origin of the brand Chrzanowska Manufaktura Wędlin?
Chrzanowska Manufaktura Wędlin was created as a response to the expectations of our customers. The name and logo of the brand excellently emphasize the traditional character, reference to a good craft practice, proven recipes, top quality and the place of production of our products.
What is the brand idea you pass on to your customers?
Above all, building of brand awareness and competence through a guaranteed top-quality, unique taste and high meat content of the products.
How wide is the assortment Chrzanowska Manufaktura Wędlin can boast of?
The brand portfolio is very broad. It includes smoked meats, thin and thick sausages. Our product leader is the “Kruche z Chrzanowa” (Chrzanów Tender) line, featuring such products as Szynka Krucha z Chrzanowa (tender ham), Kiełbasa Krucha z Chrzanowa drobiowa (tender poultry sausage), Kiełbasa Krucha z Chrzanowa wieprzowa (tender pork sausage). The offer also includes a long list of products, such as the Kiełbaski Degustino homemade preserves pasteurized as in the old days (11 varieties). Recently, we introduced Szynka Bacy [shepherd's ham], Krakowska tender sausage with chicken fillet, as well as a line of roasted products. One of the newest ChMW product lines are wieners, high in meat content, skinless and gluten-free, which have been introduced in eleven varieties. They are packed in small, convenient packages of 100 g and larger ones of 250 g.
What major activities do you undertake to promote the brand successfully?
We had started building the Chrzanowska Manufaktura brand in late 2014 through an intensive television and radio campaign and we continued from January through to April of this year. TV campaigns were supported by POS materials and many marketing actions supporting our customers. The main goal of our advertising activities is to build brand awareness and show a wide brand portfolio to our partners. An unquestionable advantage is the high quality of our products, their unique taste and original packaging. We try to ensure that ChMW products distinguish themselves among the competitors, so our packaging is an immitation of paper, referencing naturalness and ecology. For product identification, we use bands and name labels with distinguishing elements.
What is the production capacity of the Chrzanów plant?
The plant has its own modern pork and poultry cutting lines, as well as one of the latest poultry cutting technologies. This allows us to completely secure the raw materials for production, as well as to achieve price flexibility in the market.
Continuous investments in the modernization of the machinery, smoking chambers and other production devices allow us to repeatedly produce high quality products.
Additionally, having one of the most modern fully-automated frankfurters production lines in Poland, we can achieve a very high efficiency of finished products. The products from the frankfurters line are subject to pasteurization, which allows both to preserve the nutritional values of the product and to shelf life up to 6 months. Various forms of packaging, combined with the capability of the production of no casing, allow us to offer a wide range of products, both in variable-weight and fixed-weight, in packages between 100 g and 1000 g.
The plant has one of the most advanced meat freezing lines in the market, shock freezers preserve the properties of the products, and high bay freezers allow to maintain the stock. We are currently planning to purchase a state-of-the-art cured meat slicing line for our production plant, with a performance of more than 20 tons per day.
How do you ensure the quality and safety of your products?
Concerning the safety and high quality of the products offered, the plant successively implements the safe food policy and has ISO-22000, ISO-9001, BRC, and IFS systems in place. We are also one of the few plants in Poland which has a Meat Master machine for the standardization of raw materials with regard to the content of fat, protein, water and salt.
To our customers, we can offer professional service, complete and timely deliveries, and we are also able to create products to match individual requests for proposals.