The start of the UK salad season couldn’t have gone any better. Adjectives such as “firm”, “strong” and “stellar” have been used to describe the lettuce, tomato and cucumber crops this spring, with industry insiders admitting that they really couldn’t have asked for anything more.
Certainly salads has been one of the top performing categories in the past year, with eight per cent value and 3.7 per cent volume sales increases [Kantar].
The tomato crop came on stream in late March, as scheduled, with glasshouse production well-regulated given the mild weather.
“There has been a lot of good production on the market,” says one tomato grower. “And we have been picking constantly. We expect the main volume to drop off in four to five weeks’ time. There is a lot of energy in the plants at this point, so it may even go for longer.”
The price of tomatoes has definitely been firmer for the UK crop, with a major increase in demand due to the bank holidays, unusually early sunny weather and the royal wedding.
“I’d liken the week of the royal wedding to Christmas week,” says one supplier. “There were lots of street parties, and it was hot, so everyone was buying salad.”
Leafy salad producers also came out of royal wedding week smiling. “Our season started strong with the fine weather and the four bank holidays, but that has really calmed down now with the cooler weather,” says one producer. “Sometimes retail promotions can be a catch-22. Does it actually create sales or does it only sell because of the weather, therefore losing us money? I don’t always see the positive side of it.”
Back on the tomato shelf, during the English season there seems to be a different tomato line on promotion each week, which some believe keeps the sales momentum going. “I’m surprised that the percentage of salads sold on promotion - 30 per cent [Kantar] - isn’t more,” says the tomato grower.
“Although promotions do not seem to be encouraging repeat purchase at the moment - people are still bargain shopping and going for the cheaper option - we need promotions within the supermarkets. This is especially true to start off the season and I think that the balance with supply and demand is right. Demand is still good, but it has declined a little from the highs of a couple or so weeks ago and that’s when we need a lot of good promotions in the marketplace.”
One leafy salad brand that continues to be successful is Florette. The company had a very strong first quarter in 2011, with sales up 10.1 per cent versus the category’s five per cent increase. “Importantly, Florette’s penetration increased 7.6 per cent which helped drive the brand’s performance and subsequently frequency of purchase increased 13.8 per cent,” says commercial director Sandy Sewell.
“Moving into spring, the combination of two long bank holiday weekends and the unexpected warm weather has seen Florette perform way beyond our expectations in April - sales were up 32 per cent according to our internal figures. We hope to see this momentum maintained as we’re running a high-profile TV advertising campaign to engage with consumers and further boost retail sales.”
Of course, there is hardly another sector so reliant on the weather than salads, and this spring has proven that once again. Particularly with leafy salads and cucumber, the changeover from Spanish product worked well with Spain’s warm temperatures ending its season prematurely and English crop coming on early. Similarly, competition from Dutch tomatoes has been lesser this year due to the need for Dutch premiums to be high given some on the larger companies’ financial situations.
“Clearly the weather is on our side and it’s so far so good,” says one insider. “This has been one of the best springs in a long while; quality has been good and the changeover has been seamless. Who can tell what will happen next? It is too early to say, but of course we need the good weather to continue.”
According to Florette, premium salad consumers have been driving the highest share of sales growth across the category, around £6m more than everyday salad mixes over the last three years,” says Sewell.
But many think it’s a mixed bag. “Because of the state of the economy, who can say why salads are selling?” asks one producer. “We just have to make the most of it.”
WATERCRESS TAKES CENTRE STAGE IN SUMMER OF BRITISH SALAD
The salads category has had a great start and traditional English staple watercress has been no exception. Elizabeth O’Keefe talks to The Watercress Company’s Tom Amery, after the annual kick off to the season that is the Watercress Festival in Alresford, about how the season has played out so far and what we can expect to see this summer.
It’s been a great start to the watercress season - how would you describe production up until now?
The year got off to a terrific start when we had a superb piece of coverage on BBC’s Countryfile, which boosted sales by around 30 per cent. This has been sustained throughout February, March and April, helped by the generation of further PR-led stories. Demand has tailed off a little over the last week due to the much colder and wetter weather in many parts of the country and the coming on stream of other British seasonal vegetable crops.
The good weather meant the English season started a little earlier, at the beginning of May. The rest of the salad industry was under pressure because of the lack of rain and the need to irrigate; we don’t have those challenges because we cultivate our crops using spring or borehole water, from deep in the chalk aquifers, so this was a benefit.
Should we expect to see more volume on the market this season, then?
Yields are on target and quality has been very good, helped by good strong light levels. Because of the huge leap in demand so early on, we managed to reprogramme our business accordingly and so no orders have been shorted at any stage.
Are consumers buying into watercress’s regional provenance more?
Although demand has been fantastic, we have noticed that some supermarkets have undertraded and sold out from time to time, maybe because they don’t want wastage. Another factor could be unexpected increases in consumer demand influenced by positive media coverage of watercress - whatever the reason it does mean a loss of potential sales.
When we had the huge surge in demand in January, it showed that consumers were quite happy to buy watercress from America - they were just buying into the whole watercress story. But now the British season is in full swing, consumers want the British product. Some retailers market watercress with a special regional Hampshire bag and this outperforms the national watercress bag in the same stores, so it shows that when offered the choice people do like a regional offering.
Do they understand how it is produced and where it comes from?
The key thrust of our PR campaign is telling people where the product comes from, how it is grown and how healthy it is, and people are really receptive to this message. The 15,000 people who flocked to our Watercress Festival on 15 May is evidence of this. Provenance is very important to us and we have a great story to tell. If you ask someone nowadays about watercress, the chances are that they will know it is a ‘superfood’, so we are getting our message across. Eight years ago before the PR campaign, run by Mustard Communications, launched, one in two people thought watercress was the stuff they grew on blotting paper at school. Nowadays it is a very different story and the industry has been completely revitalised.
Are supermarkets supporting the product?
Yes, in many ways. A key goal is to ensure good signage and point of sale as this can often lead to more successful long-term sales than a price promotion.
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