The price of seafood sold by U.K. grocery chains has increased steadily over the past year. While this has lifted the overall value of seafood sales, the actual volume of fish products sold in the channel has continued to fall in all categories, finds the latest Nielsen ScanTrack data supplied by the U.K. Seafish Authority.
Shoppers paid an average GBP 10.45 (USD 13.56, EUR 11.99) per kg for their seafood in the 52 weeks that ended 6 October 2018, an increase of 4.1 percent year-on-year. In terms of price per unit, they paid an average GBP 2.84 (USD 3.69, EUR 3.26), which was 2.8 percent more than for the previous 12 months.
The higher prices contributed to a total sales value of almost GBP 3.3 billion (USD 4.3 billion, EUR 3.8 billion), up 2 percent, but the total volume of seafood purchased fell by the same margin to 314,706 metric tons (MT). Unit sales fell by almost 1 percent to 1.16 billion.
Seafish’s figures also confirmed that chilled seafood, which accounts for almost two-thirds of total retail sales, achieved a 1.5 percent growth in sales value, reaching GBP 2.1 billion (USD 2.7 billion, EUR 2.4 billion) for the 12-month period. However, the volume of chilled sales fell slightly to 151,623 MT, with average prices across the category of GBP 13.93 (USD 18.08, EUR 15.98) per kg and GBP 3.41 (USD 4.43, EUR 3.91) per unit, up 1.6 percent and 1.5 percent respectively.
Meanwhile, the value of the frozen seafood category increased by 2.8 percent to GBP 739.5 million (USD 959.9 million, EUR 848.2 million), and ambient seafood sales grew by 3.9 percent to GBP 438.9 million (USD 569.6 million, EUR 503.6 million). The volume sold in frozen decreased by 2.5 percent to 102,658 MT, while in ambient it declined by 5.6 percent to 60,426 MT.
The average price of frozen seafood for the 12 months increased by 5.4 percent to GBP 7.20 (USD 9.34, EUR 8.26) per kg, and by 3 percent per unit to GBP 2.60 (USD 3.37, EUR 2.98). The price increase for ambient seafood was even steeper with 9.6 percent per kg to GBP 7.26 (USD 9.42, EUR 8.33) and 6.7 percent per unit to GBP 1.71 (USD 2.22, EUR 1.96).
Frozen and ambient sales accounted for 22.5 percent and 13.3 percent of the U.K. retail market value respectively.
In terms of the species sold across all categories, the U.K. retail market was led by salmon with sales approaching GBP 930 million (USD 1.2 billion, EUR 1.1 billion), up 2.9 percent year-on-year. In volume terms, sales remained static at 52,885 MT and 231 million units.
Cod and tuna followed with sales values of GBP 412.5 million (USD 535.5 million, EUR 473.4 million) and GBP 335.3 million (USD 435.3 million, EUR 384.8 million) respectively.
The average price per kg for these top three species increased by 2.7 percent, 5.4 percent and 12 percent respectively.
With 22.7 percent of the total sales value, Tesco continued to be the country’s leading seafood retailer, followed by Sainsbury’s with 14.9 percent and Aldi with 10.3 percent. Aldi was the only one of the three to grow its market share over the 12-month period.
