Silver Fern Farms: a true understanding of global consumers

How Silver Fern Farms developed a true understanding of global consumers that is now delivered to the business using Infotools Harmoni.

Background

Silver Fern Farms is New Zealand’s leading, processor and exporter of premium red meat, supplying lamb, beef, venison, and other products to over 30 countries. With a core purpose of “Creating Goodness from the Farms the World Needs”, the company is evolving from a commodity exporter into a globally recognised nourishment brand. To support this transformation, Silver Fern Farms needed structured insights capability across its key markets to inform growth and ensure decisions reflect what consumers truly think, feel and value.

Challenge

Prior to 2022, Silver Fern Farms had little visibility into consumer needs, attitudes and behavior in relation to red meat and other core categories. There was no centralized insights team, no shared data infrastructure, and no clear understanding of the premium red meat opportunity.

For example, there was a concern emerging that younger consumers were turning away from red meat for sustainability reasons and that grass-fed meat was not seen as a premium product in some markets. This narrative influenced product, brand and marketing decisions. To understand the true consumer perspective Silver Fern Farms conducted its first comprehensive multi-market research program, combining qualitative and quantitative methods across its two main export markets. The initial project resulted in a comprehensive consumer segmentation which was then rolled out to the other key markets via a proprietary premium red meat consumer tracker.

The study revealed that red-meat consumption overall was not declining and the propensity for premium sustainable red meat was strong across markets, particularly among the core consumer segments who love high quality, ethically produced meat. The research has provided new depth insight into what’s important to key consumers, how and where they engage with premium red meat in-home and out-of-home, and has uncovered what they consider to be worth paying more for. These foundational insights have supported both the commodity traded business and validated growth opportunities. However, accessing and delivering this information across markets and functions was not easy due to limited resources and multiple use cases.

Solution

To turn these findings into an ongoing source of truth, Silver Fern Farms implemented Infotools Harmoni as the foundation of its new insights’ ecosystem. Harmoni brought together data from multiple sources into one secure, interactive environment, which makes it easy to compare results across markets, track trends and democratize access to insights across the organization. In addition to providing an analysis and visualisation tool for the insights leads, the platform plays a pivotal role in delivering the consumer segmentation. By creating an easy-to-use dashboard housing selected insights/key metrics, Silver Fern Farms made insights accessible, faster to digest and easier to apply across business functions.

 “Harmoni has enabled us to get to the nine countries really easily: to compare them, identify trends, and deep dive in each country quickly, enabling us to make highly informed decisions, create granular market plans and democratise core insights across the business.”  - Belinda Freeman, Global Insights Manager, Silver Fern Farms 

Results

The impact of the new insights capability has been profound. What began as a volume to value consumer demand understanding has evolved into a core strategic function, influencing how Silver Fern Farms positions its brand, engages customers, supports farmers and identifies growth opportunities worldwide.

Key outcomes include:

• A mindset shift: Insights disproved the assumption that red-meat consumption was declining and that grass-fed red meat wasn’t a premium product. Instead, it revealed a strong demand for grass-fed red meat from New Zealand among consumers who care deeply about premium quality meat, sustainability and better farming practices.

• Clear segmentation and global consistency: With Harmoni linking data across nine countries, teams now use a shared framework to understand key consumer and shopper target audiences, improving alignment between marketing, sales and product strategy.

• Faster, smarter decision-making: Processes are more efficient, allowing teams to focus on storytelling, strategy and engagement rather than data wrangling.

• Evidence-backed confidence: Data validated that Silver Fern Farms can lead in the provision of premium, ethical and sustainable red meat in markets such as China and the USA.

In just over three years, Silver Fern Farms has developed a deep understanding of consumer behaviour, has busted many previously held myths and now positions the business as one of New Zealand’s most data-driven, market cognisant food exporters.