 Global Frozen Foods Almanac - October 2002  |
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EU
Frozen Food Consumption Inches Up,
Chilled ready meals vie for supremacy with frozen in Britain and France. Red meat sales down in France and Germany, with fish and seafood producers taking advantage of BSE scare; but poultry is still treated as a commodity. Yet even basic items like vegetables are on the rise. European frozen food consumption was definitely up last year, probably by about 1.8% to approximately 11.3 million tons. But figures are even harder to come by than usual, and it's hard to figure whether the apparent slowdown is a matter of recession or just missing numbers. A lot of numbers for Spain were missing this year in European tables issued by FAFPAS (Féderation des Associations de Fabricants des Produits Alimentatires Surgelés) in Belgium - most notably molluscs and shellfish. For the second year in a row, there was nothing from FAFPAS on Austria. Where figures are reliable, there are some obvious trends. Meat consumption was down sharply once again in Germany (from 240,481 to 201,561 tons) and France (from 118,000 to 98,000), obviously because of fears about contamination from Mad Cow Disease or Foot and Mouth Disease. Yet consumption rose in the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the UK.
Prepared foods and pastry product consumption combined (France and the Netherlands combine them, so separate totals are impossible to arrive at) seem to have posted a strong increase overall. But Germany, where prepared foods volume was up 6.7% to 661,921 tons, accounted for a lot of the total uptick, and there were overall losses in the Netherlands, Finland and Sweden to offset gains in France, Italy and the UK. Britons love their chips, and it's no surprise that at 952,700 tons frozen potato products were the largest single frozen food category in the UK, and up strongly from 933,000 tons in 2000. But German and Spanish consumption were down slightly, while French consumption stalled at 424,000 tons. The Netherlands and Italy showed gains, but the category was fairly stagnant in Sweden, Greece, Norway and Finland. Frozen fish consumption was up sharply in Germany, doubtless reflecting the reaction against meat (poultry consumption was also up there). It also showed gains in the UK, Italy and the Netherlands, but there was relatively little change in France (despite the turn away from meat in that country) and Scandinavia. The big question mark is Spain: Spaniards certainly did not suddenly stop eating frozen squid, and reported fish consumption is so low that most data must be missing. Scattered reports from FAFPAS on the euro value of frozen food, something that didn't appear until the euro was adopted as a common currency for the European Union, make for interesting reading. The UK was way in front here, at 9.908 billion, although its tonnage was not much greater than Germany's, which was valued at 8.820 billion euros. France came in third at 5.140 billion, but that didn't count poultry. Swedish consumption was valued at 1.395 billion euros, and Finnish at 330 million. UNITED KINGDOM
Britain still has the edge as the largest frozen food market in
Europe, although it may well lose that place to Germany this year
if the growth rate (2.7%) continues to lag behind that of the Federal
Republic. For some reason, frozen fruits and berries were included in the UK report for the first time, but they didn't amount to much. Ready meals were broken out into single meals and snacks (retail) and multi-meals (catering) for the first time. In tonnage terms, at least, potato products and fish fared better than prepared foods - pizza and savory bakery products actually lost ground in the latter category. More recent data from market research firm Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS) Superpanel puts frozen food sales (excluding ice cream) at £3.343 billion for the 52 weeks ended April 28, 2002, an increase of two percent from £3.278 billion a year earlier. Unit sales were up 2.6%, indicating a trend towards lower prices. The TNS study confirms some trends from the FAFPAS report, but also reveals others that were missed there. Two breakout categories are: snacks, up 24.4% to £62.7 million, and 18.8% in unit terms; and vegetable protein, up 18% to £65.8 million. TNS attributed the snack growth to private label at Tesco and Asda, two leading supermarket chains, as well as McCain Foods' Micro range. "Vegetable proteins" means meat substitutes that appeal to vegetarians. Frozen potato products, as in FAFPAS tonnage figures, contributed the most of the growth of the market, with sales up 6.6% to £338.7 million and 6.9% in unit terms, with households rather than the catering market driving the category. McCain's Roasts and Wedges and Aunt Bessie's Roasts are said to be on the cutting edge here. There were substantial gains in poultry (6.2% to £341.8 million) and ready meals (2.8% to £547 million, and 5.5% in unit terms). Private labels and Heinz are driving the category, TNS said, and people are buying more ready meals at a time. Healthy meals constitute the fastest growing segment, although sales are still small in terms of the whole category. But weighing in heavily on the negative side were frozen fish, the largest category in sterling terms but off 1.2% to £608.6 million. Green vegetables hardly budged, up 0.9% to £367.6 million), and there were downturns in desserts (off 2.9% to £236.4 million), red meat (down 1.8% to £149.9 million) and even the usually reliable categories of pizza (off 1.1% to £316.5 million) and savory bakery (down four percent to £201.2 million) faltered. Yet another report, this one from, Euromonitor, forecasts British frozen food consumption for 2002 and 2007. Because it covers only the retail sector and doesn't cover the same categories as the other two or define them in the same way, it can't really be compared to them. One thing for sure: Euromonitor isn't looking forward to rapid growth in the frozen food industry. Its forecast for 2007 is 1,518,250 tons, up just 5.5% from 1,438,000 this year - meaning an average annual increase of only 1.1%. Euromonitor predicts frozen ready meals volume will reach 262,262 tons, compared to 215,000 this year. Other increases are seen for potato products (449,238 versus 443,500), poultry (150,399 tons versus 128,500), fish and seafood (130,239 versus 122,700), pizza (93,107 versus 89,650) and bakery products (66,516 versus 62,700). But declines are forecast in vegetables (162,740 versus 172,000), red meat (66,550 versus 72,150) and desserts (64,516 versus 77,100). The greatest challenge to frozen food right now, according to Hugh Symons, a veteran of market leader Birds Eye and former officer of the American Frozen Food Institute, is fresh and chilled foods, Chilled ready meals in particular are seen by many consumers as superior to frozen in both quality and convenience, with the only advantage for frozen being price. Fresh vegetables are similarly perceived as better than frozen, even though blind taste tests indicate otherwise. To compete with fresh ready meals, frozen food manufacturers are turning more and more to ethnic items. Birds Eye has come out with Sweet Chilli Chicken with Szechwan Noodles, Tandoori Chicken Biryani, and Vegetable Biryani, for example. In other categories, recent innovations include Heinz' microwaveable All-Day Breakfast and microwave individual sponge puddings. GERMANY
The Deutsch Tiefkühlinstitut is great for correcting old statistics
as well as issuing new ones. That was the case again this year with
such basic categories as fish and seafood, ready meals and meat
and game. That could all change in this year's figures, what with the scares about weed killer in organic chicken feed and antibiotic residues of one kind or another in shrimp and other products imported from Asia. Frozen shrimp are evidently a small factor on the German market; tonnage for all molluscs and shellfish came to just 22,314 tons last year. But negative publicity might impact on the far larger saltwater fish category. As for frozen poultry, it seems to be treated as a commodity. It includes only raw product as opposed to further processed items. One further note: it was the only processed domestic meat that suffered from the disease scare; game, although a minor category, showed strong gains. What the Germans call "partial meals" - the equivalent of entrees in the United States and other countries - grew at nearly twice the rate of complete meals, and accounted for more than twice the volume. Pan (elsewhere known as stir-fry) meals and soups also showed far stronger growth than complete meals. This has to be a matter of demographics and life-styles, with consumers favoring lighter and more convenient fare. Especially when eating out, it seems, since partial meals showed considerably greater growth in the catering sector than on the retail side. Catering volume for french fries actually declined, only for another reason: fewer people were dining out at burger places, what with the BSE scare. ITLAY
Italy still has by far the lowest per capita frozen food consumption of any European Union country, and it remains the only country where half the consumption remains frozen vegetables. Laws that favor small food stores over supermarkets are the obvious reason. At 6.2%, Italy showed a stronger growth rate than any other country except perhaps for Belgium. But even the growth was largely in the traditional categories: vegetables, up 5.4%; potato products, up 5.1%; fish, up 5.1%. Prepared foods registered a 7.6% increase, with the largest gain - 8.4% to 60,800 tons - being in single ready meals. Pizza posted a more modest uptick, but then frozen pizza isn't the most popular kind in Italy. But the fastest growing category of all are pastry products, especially bread, at 11.7%; and molluscs and shellfish, at 10%. Shrimp or squid or both must be catching on in Italy; on the other hand, breaded and other prepared fish are losing out to raw. Mashed and other forms of potatoes are falling behind standard fries - even though vegetable blends and prepared vegetables are outpacing plain. SWEDEN
There's more to show and tell in Swedish frozen food this year than usual, but not all of it can be taken at face value. Did cuts and other meat products besides hamburger really grow tenfold? Were desserts really up nearly five-fold? Can pizza consumption have dropped by almost half? There may be more contradictory trends in frozen food statistics in Sweden this year than in any other country in Europe. In vegetables, it is the single items rather than blends that showed all the growth last year, despite talk of a big comeback for the latter in the form of stir-fry mixes. Raw dough is up, but raw bread is down. French fries are down, but mashed and other forms of frozen potatoes are up. Poultry parts are up, but whole birds are down. The most counter-intuitive count has to be in prepared foods, for which Swedish statistics show an overall drop of 20.2% - including that huge decline for pizza. Ready meals have been broken out this year into single meals, multi-meals, snacks and vegetarian products, with multi-meals being the largest subcategory thanks to catering sales - which don't exist for single meals. But at 59,400 tons, the total for all four falls short of the 62,700 reported for the undivided ready meal category in 2000. Savory bakery products, meanwhile, seem to have plunged in volume - but that's only because the category doesn't appear at all on the retail side, which is doubtless an oversight. Chance are that considerable dessert and meat volume was left out by oversight in 2000; that would account for the nearly astronomical increases shown on paper for 2001. Retail volume was up 4.8% last year, compared to 3.5% for catering. That could be an indication of tighter budgets for eating out, what with the country being caught up in Europe's economic doldrums. GREECE
Prepared foods and fish and seafood are showing some Greek fire, but the rest of the frozen food market is in the relative doldrums, with sales of vegetables even experiencing a sharp downturn. Pizza is showing the fastest gains in the prepared foods area, but the category is still dominated by savory bakery products. If ready meals are a factor, they haven't shown up on the FAFPAS radar yet. Raw fish similarly dominates the fish category, although breaded products are growing faster. Molluscs and shellfish fall in between in terms of growth rate. Fresh competition presumably is the cause of the decline in frozen vegetables. That may also be the case in bakery products. Since there aren't any fresh french fries to speak of, it's no surprise that frozen potato products volume advanced last year. An increase in the number of working women may spur greater sales of ready meals and other convenience frozen food, including fish, which is cheaper as well as more convenient than fresh. BELGIUM
Frozen food consumption was up around six percent last year, at least on paper. As usual, frozen potato products were the largest single category at 81,000 tons, and the only one for which a breakdown between retail and catering (65,500 versus 15,500) was available. French fries accounted for 47,500 tons of retail consumption, against 18,000 for mashed and other. Retail breakdown in other categories, per FAFPAS, included vegetables (16,800 tons single, 6,400 mixed, 10,200 prepared, 1,200 other), fish (7,000 tons raw, 4,400 breaded, 300 other), pastry products (300 tons dough, 3,200 bread), prepared foods (7,700 tons pizza, 16,500 ready meals, 8,700 snacks, 100 desserts, 400 other) and poultry (100 tons whole, 3,200 parts). FRANCE
French frozen food statistics available to FAFPAS are pretty sketchy
- they don't even break down retail and catering, although other
sources indicate that the two sectors split the market about 50-50. As of 2000, frozen ready meals, at 78,000 tons, accounted for 28% of the market compared to 11% for chilled; and, at 587 million euros, 35% of the value versus 25% for chilled. But chilled is growing faster than frozen; also, frozen ready meals are skewed towards larger portions of French-style regional specialties and fish-based dishes, whereas chilled meals tend to be smaller portions of meat and poultry dishes. Again as of 2000, regional meals accounted for 29.5% of frozen meals, fish items for 25%, pasta dishes for 16.6%, European meals for 9,4% and side dishes for 6.8%. Findus was the leading brand at 34.6%, followed by Marie Surgelés at 19.7%; running a very distant third was Tipiak at 2.3%. One positive trend, according to Linéaires, was personalized sizes for one or two people - up 7.6%. Oddly enough, family packs also gained, as did recipes for different consumer segments like adult, traditional and pre-cooked; and dishes targeting the health and fitness market such as Sveltesse. Unilever is doing well with its L'Envie d'Envie line, and Nestlé is coming out with some new concepts, the magazine said. OTHER COUNTRIES
The Netherlands was notable this year for breaking down catering volume again after having given just a lump sum total last year. But this may have been an error in the line attributing single meals to the catering side and multi-meals to retail. If that is the case, catering consumption for 2001 was only 105,000 tons and retail 210,700. Only 519,900 tons for Spain were reported by FAFPAS, but that included nothing for molluscs and shellfish and only 44,200 for fish as opposed to 133,500 and 143,600, respectively, in 2000. QFFI is thus estimating modest gains for both, but accepting FAFPAS number in other categories - even vegetables, where a sharp decrease is indicated. With nothing to go on from FAFPAS on the Austrian frozen food market for the second year in a row, QFFI simply projected a moderate three percent increase across the board. This is in keeping with the last growth rate (1999) reported by the Euromonitor research group. But Euromonitor noted that poultry consumption had been declining for several years as of 1999. Norway may have revised its figures from 2000, since FAFPAS credits it with only a five percent increase for 2001 although its 202,500-ton total is 7.4% ahead of that previously reported for 2000. |
