UK Growth in Seasonings Comes at the Expense of Sauces
According to Cooking Sauces & Food Seasonings 2015, a new report from market intelligence provider Key Note, the value of the UK cooking sauces and food seasonings market fell by 0.3% in 2014, following a period of sustained year-on-year growth. Decline was driven by the cooking sauces sector, however, and actually disguises the healthy growth of the smaller food seasonings category.
Cooking sauces are a popular and convenient mealtime solution for many Britons, with the range of formats, sizes and price points helping to enhance household penetration. But while some categories continue to perform — notably Indian and Italian — the sector as a whole has suffered from a dip in retail prices and rising own-label sales. In addition, sales are increasingly being squeezed on two opposing sides: on the one hand, the demand for greater mealtime convenience is driving ready meal sales; on the other, the resurgent popularity of cooking from scratch is driving food seasoning sales.
A growing number of Britons want to have full control over what they eat due to concerns about food fraud, additives and health, and believe that cooking from scratch is the best way to achieve this. When combined with the increasingly adventurous nature of the consumer base, the demand for a broader range of dried herbs and spices has grown significantly in recent years. Although threats do remain, not least the rivalry with fresh herbs, recent revelations regarding the impurity of dried oregano and inflated retail prices as a result of global market pressures, it is clear that the food seasonings sector significantly outperformed the cooking sauces sector in 2014.
Key Note expects this to continue to be the case over coming years, with the popularity of cooking from scratch expected to increase. Despite the fact that the cooking sauces sector is likely to return to growth in the near future, it is expected to be modest and primarily based on recovering sales in the premium category rather than as a result of improved volume sales. Overall therefore, Cooking Sauces & Food Seasonings 2015 forecasts market value growth of just below 4% between 2015 and 2019.
