Earlier this year, Iceland debuted a new innovative brand acceleration programme, Brands on Ice.

The quarterly initiative is backed by a £100,000 investment fund and was introduced as a scheme to allow both emerging and established brands to pitch ground-breaking product ideas.

The new venture comes amid Iceland’s ongoing strategy to position itself not just as a frozen food specialist, but as a full-range supermarket committed to driving innovation and excitement for its customers.

As the first wave of exclusive products roll out into stores, we catch up with Iceland head of innovation and licensing Oliver Gilding to find out why it is investing in innovation in the grocery aisle and its big plans for the scheme.

Iceland is making bold strides in redefining its identity and expanding its frozen food roots, and Gilding says Brands on Ice is a continuation of this.

“We were inundated with submissions, which is brilliant,” says Gilding. “The session was only supposed to go over one day where we would see six suppliers. We had over 100 applications.”

“We ended up extending the session across two days, where we saw 12 different suppliers presenting a range of different products which sit across a number of different categories not just frozen, but also grocery and chilled.”

Iceland’s Oliver Gilding

Brands were invited to Iceland’s Deeside head office and had an opportunity to present the products, range and their ideas.

Each brand was typically given half an hour to present, but products which needed a longer time to cook, would be given more flexibility.

Here, the Brands on Ice team were able to view the commercials and products on offer.

Gilding says: “We encountered a whole host of brands with some unbelievable innovation and some great ideas of how they could activate.”

Whether through distribution, helping to design the packaging to be more impactful for its customers, or orchestrating effective PR and social media campaigns, Iceland says it wants to support these brands.

“We’re working hand in glove with each of the brands in a completely different way than we would have ever done previously and where the rest of the retail have very stringent requirements on how brands launch within their stores.”

“What I’m really excited about is bringing new innovation and helping manufacturers that are looking to create their own brand within an area that they’ve not done previously.”

So what is Iceland looking for and what makes a good product?

“Ultimately, I think its about customers being excited to buy new products that they’ve never seen before,” surmises Gilding.

This may be due to a different format, a different take on packaging, or something unusual that shoppers can’t ordinary go to every retailer and purchase.

The perfect “disruptive product” that Iceland is looking for incorporates all of these factors, as well as being affordable.

“Ultimately they need to be appropriately priced. There’s no point seeing an amazing piece of innovation, but it’s it’s far too expensive for our customers to be able to buy on a daily or weekly basis.”

So far, products from giants including Britvic, Müller and Happy Egg, as well as lesser known brands such as Austrian ice cream brand Frozen Power and pizza specialist Italpizza.

Gilding says it is looking for a “diverse group of products that fall across a whole host of different categories, as well as being differing price points”.

You can’t just walk into another retailer and see those products, because they just don’t exist

This, Iceland claims, is what differentiates its brand accelerator scheme from others on the market.

“We’ve got suppliers and brands presenting to us that haven’t got any listings in the market who are really quite small, family-owned businesses. We’ve been able to work with them on launching products across a number of our stores and ensuring that they are comfortable with that.

“We’re not just throwing open the doors to 1000 distribution points and hoping that they can produce to maintain stock in those stores.

“That’s why we have been so successful with our exclusive brands and our ranges of MyProtein, Cathedral City, TGI Fridays, and Slimming World. They all serve a purpose through the diversification of what that category looks like.”

“You can’t just walk into another retailer and see those products, because they just don’t exist. And I think that’s why we’ve had such success with exclusive brands.”

Although the focus of Brands on Ice is to bring new innovative products to the market, Gilding believes there is also an opportunity to revive brands.

Iceland has done this with Britvic-owned Tango Cherry, which was discontinued in 2020. The relaunch was supported by a “huge activation” including social media activity and the takeover of an Iceland store which was renamed ‘Tangoland’.

Gilding points out there can often be huge public support for products after they have been discontinued.

“I think Caramac is a perfect example. When products and brands are not available to customers when they’ve always been there, is a huge disappointment for customers. We’re happy to review those.”

“If there’s products that have laid dormant for a number of years for them to come back in a big way we’re more than happy to to assist and for those to be involved as well,” adds Gilding.

Brands on Ice will bring a raft of exciting new products to Iceland stores int he coming months. Gilding reveals that celebrity chef Jamie Oliver is set to launch a frozen range of “fuss free and nutritious read meal pouches” for shoppers on the go.

He also teases a brand with “a new take on the sausage roll”.

And this is just from the first of Brands on Ice’s quarterly sessions, with the next will take place in November.

Gilding has big plans for the scheme.

“We’re off to a really good start. But I think as we look to move into the next year or so, I’d love to see not only product innovation, but innovation within packaging, innovation within ingredients which are used, coating systems, and the way in which customers engage with the products. Product innovation is only one aspect of what we’re looking to really spearhead for the industry,” he says.

The evolution of the initiative will also help Iceland change customer perceptions as looks to broaden its reach and be seen as more than just a frozen or value retailer.

Earlier this year, it teamed up with YouTube sensations with the launch of a frozen Sides range – a brand debut that saw it attract much social media attention through a take-over of a Iceland store.

Photo: Sidemen unveiling Iceland’s new Sidesland store

The opening of ‘Sidesland’ brought crowds of young fans with traffic in the Hackney store coming to a temporary standstill as a branded Sidesland HGV lorry played music for the queues.

Gilding says: “I think Brands on Ice is a great opportunity for us to drive even more new customers into our stores, who, upon visiting are often surprised and really quite excited by the broad range of offerings within chilled and also grocery.

The new innovation programme is not only giving brand owners a route to market for new and exciting products, its giving Iceland a real diffentiator too.