While the intense rivalry between the United Kingdom’s leading supermarkets continues to provide savvy shoppers with a generous array of competitively priced food offers, the latest data from the U.K. Seafish Authority suggests that when it comes to seafood, the country’s consumers increasingly have a preference and see the most value in the more expensively positioned chilled category.
According to Seafish, retail sales of seafood for in-home consumption topped GBP 3.1 billion (USD 3.8 billion, EUR 3.6 billion) in the 12 months to 3 December 2016, which represented an increase of around 1 percent. In volume terms, sales equated to 329,626 metric tons (MT) of products or 1.2 million unit sales, up 0.3 percent and 0.4 percent respectively. But more tellingly, the authority’s figures also highlight that while there was a very slight reduction in the average price paid across retail’s leading sales category – chilled seafood – the grocery price war is still to pervade the sector.
Chilled seafood sales grew in value by 3.1 percent to more than GBP 2 billion (USD 2.4 billion, EUR 2.3 billion) in the aforementioned period, with consumers buying more of these products (volume and units) than they were a year ago. By comparison, the value of the frozen seafood category increased by just 0.6 percent to GBP 689.4 million (USD 838.7 million, EUR 793.1 million) and ambient seafood sales declined by 7.3 percent to GBP 423.5 million (USD 515.2 million, EUR 487.2 million). The volumes and units sold in frozen were down 1.2 percent and 1.4 percent respectively, and declined by 4.7 percent and 4.2 percent in ambient.
The growing divergence in format preference is made starker by the change in market share over the 12-month period. While chilled products had a 64.4 percent share of grocery sales, up 19.1 percent year-on-year, the share of sales in the frozen category declined 10.4 percent to 22 percent and ambient category’s share dropped 8.7 percent to 13.5 percent.
However, there has been very little new product innovation driving the growth in chilled. Natural unprocessed fish continued to dominate the category with a 37.8 percent share of sales, up 16.4 percent, and a total value of GBP 1.2 billion (USD 1.5 billion, EUR 1.4 billion).
In terms of species, the category was led by salmon with sales of GBP 765.2 million (USD 931 million, EUR 880.4 million), up 1.2 percent year-on-year, based on a volume of 46,247 MT (up 4.6 percent) and unit sales of 205.8 million (up 2.7 percent). Salmon was followed by warmwater shrimp and cod with sales values of GBP 185.3 million (USD 225.4 million, EUR 213.2 million) and GBP 180.1 million (USD 219.1 million, EUR 207.2 million) respectively.
The most growth shown in the category over the 12 months, though, was chilled lobster with sales increasing 27.5 percent to GBP 6.9 million (USD 8.4 million, EUR 7.9 million), the volume sold was up 43.1 percent to 222 MT and the number of units sold climbed 33 percent to 705,000. This performance was supported by a near 11 percent decrease in average price to GBP 31.10 (USD 37.83, EUR 35.78) per kg.
The frozen category was championed by cod product sales, which increased 7.8 percent in the 12-month period to GBP 201.3 million (USD 244.9 million, EUR 231.6 million) based on a volume of 32,906 MT (up 6.1 percent), followed by pollock which fell 16.3 percent in value to GBP 98.6 million (USD 119.9 million, EUR 113.4 million) and dropped 12.6 percent in volume to 22,981 MT.
Canned and pouched tuna, meanwhile, dominated ambient sales. But sales of these products were down 7.3 percent to GBP 267 million (USD 324.7 million, EUR 307.1 million), the volume sold fell 4.8 percent to 48,904 MT and the number of units sold dropped 3.8 percent to 134.6 million.
