Prices charged for seafood by U.K. grocery chains has risen sharply over the past year. While this has lifted those supermarkets’ earnings, the actual volume of fish products sold in the channel has continued its declining trend, finds the latest Nielsen ScanTrack data supplied by the U.K. Seafish Authority.
In terms of price-per-kg, shoppers paid an average GBP 9.58 (USD 12.61, EUR 10.72) for their seafood in the 52 weeks that ended 16 June 2018, an increase of 5.8 percent year-on-year. The higher prices contributed to a total sales value of GBP 3.8 billion (USD 5 billion, EUR 4.3 billion), up 4.1 percent, but the total volume of seafood purchased fell by 1.6 percent to 397,830 metric tons (MT).
Seafish’s figures also confirmed that chilled seafood, which accounts for almost two-thirds of total retail sales, achieved a 3.3 percent growth in sales value, nearing GBP 2.4 billion (USD 3.2 billion, EUR 2.7 billion) for the 12-month period. However, shoppers bought less of these products than they did a year previously and paid more for them.
In volume terms, chilled sales amounted to 178,304 MT, with an average price across the category of GBP 13.27 (USD 17.47, EUR 14.84) per kg, up 4.8 percent.
Meanwhile, the value of the frozen seafood category increased by 5.6 percent to GBP 910 million (USD 1.2 billion, EUR 1 billion), and ambient seafood sales grew by 5 percent to GBP 535 million (USD 704.4 million, EUR 598.5 million). The volume sold in frozen increased by 0.4 to 136,000 MT, while in ambient it declined by 5 percent to 83,500 MT.
Frozen and ambient sales accounted for 23.9 percent and 14 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 1.1 billion (USD 1.4 billion, EUR 1.2 billion), up 3.6 percent year-on-year. This total was based on a volume of 62,190 MT (down 8.5 percent).
Cod and tuna followed with sales values of almost GBP 483.5 million (USD 636.5 million, EUR 540.9 million) and GBP 400.6 million (USD 527.3 million, EUR 448.1 million) respectively.
The price per kg for these top three species increased by 13.2 percent, 5.8 percent and 13.1 percent respectively.
With 22.8 percent of the total sales value, Tesco continued to be the country’s leading seafood retailer, followed by Sainsbury’s with 15 percent and Aldi with 10 percent.
