Every day a Canary day!
All along the way we have continued to have an unrelenting focus on our customers and their needs- we understand that our customers are at the heart of our business and that is why pride ourselves in being customer intimate. This is a value that is instilled in our people from day one and resonates through each and every product that leaves out site.
We will forever continue striving to be the Go To people!
2001 - Canary is Founded
It all started with an idea – we worked out a globally unique method of making perfectly shaped butter portions (what we now call butter medallions) using Grass fed, Premium New Zealand butter which, in our opinion, is the best butter in the world.
We recognised the value in private ownership as the best way to deliver the best to both our customers and our people and so got to work selling our Canary Butter Medallions in New Zealand and Australia.
2004 - Vehicles for growth
Our Butter Medallions are ideally suited to premium airline catering, five-star hotels, cruises, resorts, trains and otherwise places where customers expect something a cut above the rest. With this in mind, we embarked on a plan to supply to leading airlines and airline caterers throughout Asia and the Middle East. Today we are the number one supplier to this key export sector.
At the same time, we established an invaluable network of distributors around the world to represent Canary’s product in selected export markets. They helped us to supply both the airline market and premium hotels and caterers as we continued to grow.
2008 - New Tail Feathers
With the ongoing growth in our customer base and export markets, we soon outgrew our first manufacturing facility and so in 2008 designed, built and moved into a new processing facility which is where you will find us today.
Our new facility enabled the development of a range of innovative, premium butter products such as Pastry Butter Sheets which are used by bakers and chefs to make products such as croissants, puff pastry and Danish pastries. This opportunity allowed us to expand our manufacturing capabilities by installing a new butter sheet manufacturing machine and could now produce a wide range of extruded butter and blended butter products.
2012 - Spreading the word
As word spread, customers asked us for new types of butter products and we began to expand our range. It was during this time that we introduced cheese into our product offering and installed a cheese portioning line which runs to this day, supplying individually wrapped cheese to many leading airlines in New Zealand and overseas.
We also designed and installed our flavoured butter manufacturing line, which has since been modified to also manufacture a range of flavoured sauce portions. These products are all individually quick frozen and bulk packed for supply to chicken, meat, fish and vegetable processors.
2013 – Gold on the other side of the Road
Another exciting development was the launch of the Lewis Road Butter range. Canary is a joint venture partner (along with Lewis Road Creamery) in Lewis Road Butters and we developed the incredibly successful Lightly Salted and Unsalted retail butter pats. These were soon followed by a wonderful Sea Salt butter and in 2018 the “Incredible Spreadable” Lewis Road Spreadable Butter.
2014 – Room to spread our wings
This continued growth saw a further expansion to our manufacturing facility as we took over the next-door administration and warehouse building. The new space gave us the opportunity to introduce a test kitchen to experiment and innovate with the many whims and ideas of our customers. This area is now crucial to the development of our culinary range and ensures that we can keep being creative and work with almost any butter or cheese application.
The space also allowed us to introduce our repacking services to customers looking to buy our butter in bulk. This has been an invaluable service to many of our export customers looking for a premium butter for commercial applications.
2018 - Still soaring
This year saw the introduction of our latest product in cooperation with Lewis Road Creamery – the ‘Incredible Spreadable’. This spreadable butter combines Canary premium butter with sustainable-sourced oil to bring a fantastic, silky smooth butter which you can use on delicate bread straight from the fridge.
This project has given us the capability now to offer spreadable or 'tubbed' butter to any of our customers so please get in touch today to see what this might look like for you!
We end the year with lots of opportunities and ongoing projects on the go – never a dull day at Canary!
Every day a Canary day!
All along the way we have continued to have an unrelenting focus on our customers and their needs- we understand that our customers are at the heart of our business and that is why pride ourselves in being customer intimate. This is a value that is instilled in our people from day one and resonates through each and every product that leaves out site.
We will forever continue striving to be the Go To people!