Written by Iain Hoey
The latest market report from Kantar for the 12 weeks to 23 February has indicated a slowdown in sales for meat, fish and poultry.
Seeing some of the steepest declines in purchase are bacon, pork, cod and mackerel. Nathan Ward, business unit director at MFP, says the decline in sales can be attributed to consumers making fewer shopping trips and a lack of promotional support.
Ward said: “We’ve seen 764,000 fewer shoppers and 3.8m fewer trips as shoppers continue to move away from pork roasts, steaks and chops. Overall, pork has had much less promotional support than other meats and the rate of promoted sales is down.”
Chicken remains he positive story in the category, with value and volume growth as we see 315,000 more shoppers putting it in their baskets and 2.9m more trips.
Over the 12 weeks to 23 February, sales of fish struggled in both value and volume terms, with 184,000 fewer trips and static shopper numbers. Natural fish fillets are the key driver of volume decline, with 712,000 fewer trips and 199,000 fewer shoppers.
Ward added that whilst diets are changing, it is not as black and white as consumers making wholesale lifestyle changes: “Volume sales in MFP are down in across all categories except primary meat and poultry, which is fairly static. While there’s slightly more shoppers buying primary meat and poultry, we see each shopper is making fewer trips on average.”
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