Highlights:
- Tropical Sun launched in 1996 to improve supply and quality.
- The brand now spans around 700 SKUs.
- Wanis remains behind the UK’s biggest world food brand.
- Its range covers flavours from across the globe.
- Tropical Sun has grown alongside Britain’s changing food habits.
When Tropical Sun was launched by Wanis in 1996, it was created to solve a practical problem: inconsistent availability and quality in the world food supply chain. Thirty years later, the brand has grown into the UK’s biggest world food brand, with around 700 SKUs spanning flavours from across the globe.
Its journey has also tracked a fundamental change in the way Britain shops, cooks and eats.
Much has changed since 1996. The Spice Girls were telling Britain what they "really, really wanted", Euro ’96 briefly had the country convinced that football might actually be coming home, Ross and Rachel had become one of television’s biggest talking points on Friends, and many were taking on the responsibility of keeping a Tamagotchi alive.
Tropical Sun was launched in the same year.
There is also a neat piece of 1990s symmetry. While the Spice Girls encouraged Britain to “spice up your life”, Tropical Sun was quite literally helping shoppers do just that.
Over three decades, its spice and seasoning range has expanded to encompass flavours used across cuisines around the world, reflecting the increasingly international repertoire of British home cooks.
From Spice Girls to spice aisles: Tropical Sun celebrates 30 years of changing British tastes www.easterneye.biz
From supply-chain problem to global food brand
Tropical Sun was developed in-house by Wanis in 1996. The business began in 1964 as a small greengrocer’s shop and is now Europe’s largest world food wholesaler and distributor.
The brand was created in response to difficulties Wanis was experiencing in sourcing products consistently from overseas suppliers.
As a specialist serving Britain’s growing world food market, Wanis was importing products from numerous countries and manufacturers. But it did not always have sufficient control over availability, consistency or quality.
For a wholesaler whose customers depended on particular ingredients and products being available when they needed them, that presented a significant problem.
If an overseas supplier could not fulfil an order, products could disappear from shelves for months. Changes in manufacturers could result in differences in taste or specification, while quality could vary between shipments. Ultimately, it was Wanis’ customers who were being disappointed.
Tropical Sun provided a solution by giving Wanis greater control over quality and supply.
Creating its own brand allowed the company to work directly with producers and specify the quality, taste and standards it expected. It also enabled Wanis to build a consistent range rather than relying solely on the availability of individual third-party brands.
The concept was straightforward: bring together flavours from around the world, from sunshine countries, under one trusted brand.
From those beginnings, Tropical Sun has grown into a portfolio of around 700 SKUs, covering herbs and spices, seasonings, sauces, rice, pulses, drinks, snacks and cupboard staples inspired by cuisines from the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, Latin America and beyond.
Today, it is the UK’s biggest world food brand.
Holi Celebrations with Tropical Sunhttps://wetransfer.com/
Three decades of changing tastes
For Wanis managing director Sanjay Wadhwani, who has watched Tropical Sun develop over three decades, the brand's growth reflects both its original purpose and the transformation of Britain’s food culture.
“When we launched Tropical Sun in 1996, it came from a very practical need. Our customers relied on us for products from all over the world, but when you are dependent on different suppliers in different countries, you cannot always control availability or consistency in the way you would like. We never wanted to tell a customer that something they depended on simply wasn’t available. Tropical Sun gave us the opportunity to take greater control of quality and supply and to build a range that our customers could trust. We could never have imagined quite how far it would grow. Thirty years later, to see around 700 products carrying the Tropical Sun name and to see the extraordinary way world food has become part of everyday British life is something we are immensely proud of.”
The development of Tropical Sun has coincided with a broader transformation in Britain’s relationship with food.
British consumers are now more adventurous, influenced by international travel, eating out, a vibrant street food scene and social media. Cross-cultural flavours have become increasingly commonplace, while ingredients that once required a visit to a specialist store can now be found at the corner shop as well as the supermarket.
Thirty years of flavour
A range of around 700 SKUs would have been difficult to envisage when Tropical Sun first appeared in 1996.
Today, the portfolio stretches across multiple cuisines and categories, united by the principle on which the brand was founded: providing consumers with dependable access to authentic flavours and quality products from around the world.
Tropical Sun’s journey from a solution to a wholesaler’s supply-chain problem to a 700-SKU, £55 million world food brand has taken place alongside Britain’s growing appetite for global food.
As it marks its 30th anniversary, the brand can make a credible claim to having not simply witnessed that change, but helped supply it.
Thirty years on, Tropical Sun is still doing what it set out to do in 1996: bringing the flavours of the world to Britain.
