After a prolonged period of steady increases, the price of seafood sold through grocery chains in the United Kingdom has plateaued over the past 12 months. This adjustment has attracted slightly more unit sales overall, and is particularly benefiting the chilled fish category, newly published retail figures confirm.
According to the latest Nielsen ScanTrack data supplied by trade authority Seafish, U.K. consumers paid an average GBP 10.50 (USD 13.27, EUR 11.78) per kg for their seafood in the 52 weeks that ended 18 May 2019, an increase of 0.7 percent year-on-year. In terms of price per unit, they paid an average GBP 2.83 (USD 3.58, EUR 3.18), which was down 0.6 percent compared to the previous 12 months. This suggests that the products sold are getting smaller in size.
Crucially though, Seafish’s retail sales figures found that in the chilled seafood category, which accounts for more than 64 percent of the market, prices fell by an average 1 percent per kilogram to GBP 13.89 (USD 17.56, EUR 15.59) and by 1.9 percent per unit to GBP 3.38 (USD 4.27, EUR 3.79). While this reduced the total sales value by 0.6 percent to less than GBP 2.1 billion (USD 2.7 billion, EUR 2.4 billion), the volume of chilled sales increased by 0.4 percent year-on-year to 150,985 metric tons (MT), and the number of units sold climbed by 1.3 percent to more than 620.4 million.
It was a different story in the frozen and ambient channels. The average price of frozen seafood for the 12 months increased by 2.7 percent to GBP 7.32 (USD 9.25, EUR 8.21 per kg, and by 1.2 percent per unit to GBP 2.62 (USD 3.31, EUR 2.94). Ambient seafood prices also increased by 2.7 percent per kg to GBP 7.29 (USD 9.21, EUR 8.18) and by 1.6 percent per unit to GBP 1.72 (USD 2.17, EUR 1.93).
Consequently, frozen sales decreased by 3 percent in volume to 100,169 MT and by 1.6 percent in units to 280.4 million. Ambient sales dropped 1.3 percent in volume to 60,242 MT and by 0.3 percent in units to 255.5 million. In value terms, the sales these two categories totaled GBP 733.5 million (USD 927.2 million, EUR 823.3 million) and GBP 439.4 million (USD 555.5 million, EUR 493.3 million) respectively.
Frozen and ambient sales accounted for 22.4 percent and 13.4 percent of the U.K. retail market value respectively. However, Seafish’s figures do not include discounter sales.
With regard to the species sold across all categories, the U.K. retail market continues to be led by salmon with sales approaching GBP 929.3 million (USD 1.2 billion, EUR 1 billion) for the aforementioned 12 months, up 0.7 percent year-on-year. In volume terms, sales increased to 53,570 MT (up 4.1 percent) and 232.3 million units (up 3.3 percent).
Cod and tuna followed with sales values of GBP 409.4 million (USD 517.6 million, EUR 459.6 million, down 1 percent) and GBP 333.5 million (USD 421.6 million, EUR 374.4 million, up 0.9 percent), respectively.
In terms of prices, salmon fell by 3.3 percent to GBP 17.35 (USD 21.93, EUR 19.48) per kg, while cod was up 3.5 percent to GBP 8.87 (USD 11.21, EUR 9.96), and tuna climbed by 3.3 percent to GBP 7.40 (USD 9.35, EUR 8.31).
With 22.4 percent of the total sales value, Tesco is the country’s leading seafood retailer, followed by Sainsbury’s with 14.5 percent and discounter Aldi with 10.7 percent. Aldi continued to be the only one of the top three to grow its market share over the 12 months.
