Morelli's Ice Cream enlists students to choose summer flavours

Leading Irish ice cream business, Morelli's has chosen its flavours for summer with help from second year undergraduates on the BSc Hons Consumer Management and Food Innovation degree at Ulster University in Coleraine in county Derry.

As a result, the award winning company, based at Coleraine in Northern Ireland,is launching Lemon Curd, Coffee, Toffee and Chocolate Crisp, Vanilla with Salted Caramel Ripple, White Chocolate and Raspberry Supreme and a Luxury Caramelised Hazelnut for summer 2015.

Students were briefed by Arnaldo Morelli, Morelli's commercial director, about product innovation, retailing and the challenges involved in growing a family business. The students conducted sensory taste testing on 14 products at the new Food and Consumer Testing Suite (FACTS) on the Coleraine Campus to identify the six best flavours to be launched onto the market place.

Lecturer Dr Lynsey Hollywood say: "This was a great opportunity for our students to collaborate with a local company and learn more about retailing, sensory testing and the challenges involved in launching a new product onto the market."

Arnaldo Morelli adds: "It was fantastic to receive the assistance of Dr Hollywood and her students in helping to choose our new flavours for 2015, this is something that is usually done in-house but the results and feedback have certainly got us thinking and we'll hopefully be using sensory analysis to test even more new flavours in 2016."

Morelli's family owned ice cream parlours have been trading in Northern Ireland's holiday resorts such as Portrush and Portstewart since 1911. Their award winning ice cream is available via franchised stores and retail scoop concessions right across Ireland. 2015 is set to be a record year for the company with its annual output set to top 500,000 litres of finished ice cream for the first time.

The company distributes its ice cream throughout Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland and has won a string of awards from the Ice Cream Alliance for flavours especially the traditional double cream vanilla. It sources milk from suppliers close to its production plant in Coleraine, county Derry.

Pic caption: Arnaldo Morelli, commercial director of Morelli's Ice Cream with students (left to right) Bethany Cummins, Laura Markwell, Amy Thompson and Hannah McGookin