BRANDED

Canadian wheat has long been the brand leader of wheat globally — but can that reputation survive the new reality?

Ten floors above Winnipeg’s bustling Main Street, Seyed Moineddin Ahmadi sits in a boardroom in the offices of Cigi (the newly rebranded Canadian International Grains Institute) and warms to a topic of some importance to him professionally.

Moin, as he’s more commonly known, is a wheat trader with Al Ghurair Resources, based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. That name might not mean a lot to someone on a farm in Western Canada, but it certainly means something to anyone in the food business in the Middle East.

It’s a division of Al Ghurair Investment, a diversified industrial group with interests ranging from food and agriculture to energy, property management, printing and publishing, regional retail chains and educational institutions.

The resource division he works for owns and operates several mills in the region, as well as supplying key ingredients like grains to other milling operations in the area.

His topic today is your wheat. Specifically high-quality Canadian milling wheat, something he said has become the gold standard in the region over the past three decades.

“We started using it about 30 years ago,” he explained. “Prior to that we were using Australian wheat, and in a lot of ways that made sense. It’s close to us geographically, and they produce very good-quality wheat too.”

But back in the early 1980s the Australians ran into some quality control problems, leading to some production problems at mills in the region. For millers, Moin said, raw material consistency is the key. It determines how efficiently their mills run, how much flour they can extract from their grist and ultimately how profitable they’ll be. Trouble with the top-end wheat spelled trouble all the way down the line.

“We use it to improve our grain mix prior to milling,” Moin explained.

That means the best milling wheat is carefully rationed and deployed as needed to ensure the resulting flour is the right type for the right job. For example, a risen bread requires one type of flour, high in the proteins that create gluten. A noodle or unleavened pita bread is another thing entirely.

Variability in this top-quality milling wheat is something to be avoided at all costs, and faced with problems from their original supplier, they began exploring other options. Enter Team Canada.

At the time, the only supplier of Canadian wheat to export markets was the Canadian Wheat Board, and that’s where Al Ghurair went, initially agreeing to try some small lots to test quality. They liked what they saw, and began expanding their orders, slowly bringing other skeptical millers over to the new product.

“We were the first in the region to try it, and we convinced others,” Moin said. Slowly, mill by mill, the entire region was won over. Winning these markets takes time, but once it happens they become very stable customers, Moin said, precisely because they want the predictability that comes from a single reliable supplier.

It’s also why protecting the image of Canadian wheat is a vital interest for Canadian growers and grain merchants, he says, scoffing at any question of whether brand-building activities should be a priority.

“Canadian wheat is very well thought of by millers and customers — it’s very important that it stays that way,” he said.

Down the hallway in the office of Dave Burrows, that’s the sort of statement that’s very well received. He’s Cigi’s director of client relations and communications, and is the former manager of branding for the Canadian Wheat Board. He came to the grain industry a few years ago from the confectionery industry, where he managed household-name-type brands, like Life Savers. It might seem like a bit of a leap to the world of wheat, but Burrows says it’s smaller than it might at first seem.

“I don’t think there’s any question as to whether the brand exists and its value to the industry,” he said. “But it’s a brand with a lot of moving parts, and they all contribute to the brand.”

For example, along with the quality of wheat itself, there’s the country and its international reputation. Like it or not, we’re frequently seen as having a bit of the Boy Scout in us. We’re trusted as honest brokers who do what they say.

Then there’s the regulatory system, and how it ensures quality control in shipments leaving the nation’s shores. Buying grain from other destinations always leaves more than a few lingering questions about just what you’re going to get when you open up that ship’s hold, Moin said.

“You can buy high-quality wheat from other locations, such as Russia or Ukraine out of the Black Sea,” Moin says. “But there simply isn’t the same consistency or guarantee. There’s a lot of peace of mind that comes with getting that certificate from a government agency that says exactly what you’re getting, then opening the ship and finding you’ve gotten it every time.”

This brand, built on these many parts, didn’t evolve overnight. It’s the result of a century of evolution, beginning with the creation of the Canadian Grain Commission’s earliest form in 1912, and through the formation of the Canadian Wheat Board.

It has existed in a form most would recognize for more than 70 years, and is in the process of undergoing a major evolution with the removal of the Canadian Wheat Board’s single-desk sales powers just over a year ago. Burrows describes it as a crossroads, and a time for the industry to evaluate the direction it should take, since it now involves far more players than ever before.

“We talk about brands needing a champion, and I think now that champion is the industry as a whole,” Burrows said. “That means exactly what the brand will be is something the industry itself will have to determine.”

That means there could be calls for a move away from the highest-quality wheat model towards something a bit more middle-of-the-market.

“You don’t always have to be the Lexus,” Burrows said. “The industry may decide there’s value in being seen as a bit more workmanlike, yet still a reliable supplier with good quality assurance and excellent after-sales service.”

Regardless what the business decides the Canadian wheat brand should be, it would be a mistake to just leave it to chance, he said. For example, the widespread view that Black Sea wheat isn’t particularly high quality or reliable is itself a brand — though not one most would aspire to.

“It’s a mistake to think the decision is you’ll have a brand or you won’t have a brand,” Burrows said. “You’ll have a brand if you do nothing at all.”

This reality is why Burrows stresses that the industry, and farmers through the currently developing provincial wheat commissions, should understand what they’ve got and how it might evolve. He suggested Cigi’s website and representatives of the grain companies dealing with international customers as excellent resources for those looking to familiarize themselves with the issue.

While he stresses the decision is one to be made by the industry as a whole, when pressed Burrows did concede that as someone with a fair bit of experience in branding, he did have a personal preference.

“Personally I think there’s still a lot of value in pursuing the high-value brand,” Burrows said. “But again, that’s a decision the industry as a whole needs to make.”

— Gord Gilmour is editor of Crops Guide and an associate editor with Country Guide in Winnipeg. CLICK HERE to visit the October 2013 issue of Crops Guide, in which this article appears (pgs. 17-19).