Despite recent high-profile advertising campaigns for frozen foods, latest analysis of the market from TNS shows that the sector is losing ground to chilled and fresh-cut products.
“This is something that is happening across all sectors of frozen; meat and ready meals as well as vegetables,” said TNS’s Paul Corrigan. “While sales of frozen are down three per cent across the sector, up-take of fresh and chilled is up four per cent. What we are seeing is that fresh-cut is stealing spend from frozen.” Specifically, frozen vegetable sales fell 3.5 per cent on the 12-month period to March compared to a year ago, above the sector average decline.
Corrigan explained that customer perception and convenience are both playing a role. “In the produce arena it is not just that fresh is somehow better, but also there is the convenience element with prepared and fresh-cut showing strong growth and stealing volume from their frozen counterparts,” he said.
The trend is continuing its growth on the past couple of years, but frozen companies are starting a fight-back. For example, Birds Eye launched a high-profile television advertising campaign to try and counteract this effect, but so far there has been no evidence to show this is proving effective in taking share back from fresh.
Lower prices are helping fuel a poor consumer image of frozen products that are often seen by consumers as less healthy and lower in quality.
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