Chips are big business. One in four home-grown potatoes are made into the tasty treats, which together make up a £338 million sector that holds its own come rain or shine. The iconic fries are a stable on the menu both inside and outside the home, with eight in 10 households buying frozen chips each year and chips accounting for nearly three quarters (74 per cent) of all potato servings outside the home. In fact, it would take an area the size of 45,000 Wembley Stadium football pitches to grow all the potatoes needed for the chips eaten in Britain each year.
Kantar Worldpanel figures for the chip market for the year to 23 January 2011 show that value growth is up by 0.3 per cent on last year, while volume is up 0.6 per cent to 330mt.
The category will get a boost from National Chip Week when it returns for its 20th annual campaign next week, which is set to generate press coverage worth £3.75million in advertising spend. The promotional week has become a time for the industry to make the most of its offer, take stock and think about the best way forward.
This year’s initiative will be backed by X Factor finalist and “singing dustman” Andy Abraham, who will promote an online singing competition as the centerpiece of the event, dubbed the “Chip Factor”. To enter, consumers will perform one of three chip tunes and upload them to www.lovechips.co.uk. The top renditions will then be put to a public vote, with the winner receiving the chance to enjoy a portion of chips anywhere in the world.
At the same time, a report into chip-eating habits and trends will be released to deliver a snapshot of the nation’s love affair with fries.
Behind the scenes, awareness events took place in nine locations across the UK at the beginning of the year in preparation for National Chip Week and a three-hour workshop provided an outline of how the industry can maximise PR opportunities from the campaign.
Caroline Evans, head of marketing and corporate affairs at the Potato Council, maintains that the sector has responded well to changing consumer needs and that the annual promotional push is key to keeping sales buoyant.
“Taste, convenience, health and provenance are all important consumer considerations and these factors will play a role in shaping the future of the chip market and new product development,” she says. “But chips are eaten out of home more than any other potato product and consumers continue to enjoy them in home, so we expect sales to remain positive.
“As always, the Potato Council is working to create increased media awareness of the promotional week to send out key messages and remind the nation why they love chips.
“It is a fantastic platform that can be used to drive up demand. In fact, all sectors of the industry involved with chips from fresh to frozen and foodservice can benefit from the impact of the week.”
A number of forward-thinking suppliers are working on ways to keep improving this heavyweight category. This means everything from promoting awareness of fresh chips as well as frozen and pushing new product development, to coming up with new shapes and flavours that change with the seasons and new trends.
Triple cooking has become increasingly popular, for example, as has frying chips in beef dripping rather than more conventional vegetable oil. Wedges are seen as part of the premium offer and are helping to drive sales, while cuts ranging from chunky to shoestring are helping to create points of difference on menus.
But there are challenges facing the category, not least their association with fast food. Mohammed Essa, general manager for the UK at Aviko, maintains that the “UK palate is evolving” and tastes are diversifying. “People are becoming much more attuned to a host of more adventurous flavours,” he says. “Consumers are actively looking for more exciting flavours. Our hope is that an already burgeoning market remains as buoyant as it is now.”
However, the shape of the category is changing and competition is fierce between the best-known names in the potato business as each battle it out to make the most of the retail and foodservice markets.
The Potato Lovers brand, for example, comes under the QV Foods umbrella and is showing some of the fastest growth is the sector but is just one of a number of names pushing their offer.
Simon Martin, sales director at QV Foods, maintains that the increasing number of new prepared products coming onto the market is stealing market share from chips but he insists that the category as a whole remains lucrative. “Chips are very profitable,” he says. “Look how much a small bag of chips costs from a chippy today.”
In the long term, he predicts an increasing swing to par-fried and frozen prepared chips and fears that “the younger generation are growing up accepting the inferior taste of par-fried and frozen prepared chips compared with the unique flavour of fresh chips”.
All in all, the category is a popular option but it will take sustained effort in terms of new product development and promotions to maintain the kind of momentum that the chip market enjoys year round.
Next week’s activities should provide a strong platform on which retailers, foodservice operators and suppliers can promote their chips.
POTATO HEAVYWEIGHT LOOKS TO NEXT MOVE
Bill Bartlett, corporate affairs director from McCain Foods, on making a commitment to British growers and looking to the next generation of potato growers.
Good chips start with good potatoes and McCain Foods purchases around 750,000 tonnes a year, which is 12 per cent of the UK crop and makes us the largest single buyer of home-grown potatoes. As such, we clearly have a stake in the future of the British potato sector to help ensure its future sustainability.
We use 100 per cent British potatoes in McCain-branded chips, in retail and foodservice, and have a long established relationship with UK growers, extending to three generations of the same family in some cases. We believe that our success over the last decade is in large part attributable to our links with British growers and the quality of our potatoes.
While potato farming has existed in the UK since the time of Walter Raleigh, it is still an evolving industry and an exciting and rewarding arena in which to work. As the next generation of farmers starts to emerge, I look forward to those growers, or people who want to work in the broader supply chain, discovering this for themselves.
McCain growers are at the forefront of modern farming methods and by addressing key agricultural issues such as sustainability, we believe we can continually improve our products and help our growers adapt to an increasingly competitive environment.
In 2008, McCain formed partnerships with three agricultural colleges to reward scholarships to agriculture students. To date, we’ve had four but we would certainly welcome more applications.
It’s all about working in partnership, from first-year agricultural students through to established suppliers.
We also facilitate growers’ groups to make sure knowledge and best practice are shared. These groups also benefit from greater buying power, shared investment costs and the pooling of key resources. There are currently nine such groups, comprising between seven and 26 individual farm businesses.
These partnerships extend beyond the grower and we’re in the middle of a project with Cranfield University to identify optimal irrigation regimes and systems with a view to identifying the most cost-effective solution for specific growing conditions, while vastly reducing water usage at the same time.
At present, McCain enjoys a relationship with more than 300 potato farmers. Innovations such as the Cranfield project, alongside others such as our potato variant breeding programme, will hopefully ensure that our UK growers and the next generation continue to produce fantastic potatoes for years to come.
THE FACTS WRAPPED IN NEWSPAPER
• Around 1.5m tonnes of home-grown potatoes are made into chips each year.
• Laid end to end, all these potatoes would stretch around the world 76 times.
• Fish suppers remain the nation’s favourite takeaway meal, outselling Indian food at a rate of two to one.
• On average, 16 medium-sized potatoes go into making a 1kg bag of oven chips.
• Rumour has it that Wills and Kate will be serving fish and chips to their regal guests at their wedding in April.
(Source: Potato Council)
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