From stockpiling groceries to stockpiling frozen foods the step is short, indeed mandatory. The consumption trend during the coronavirus epidemic, the lockdown and the first months of the health crisis saw families stock up on groceries, reserves of pasta and ingredients such as flour and yeast. A shopping spree bunker, as defined by Coop, especially in the first weeks. Frozen foods were not missing in the stock, which marked an increase of 13.5% in domestic consumption in the first four months of the year.
The most purchased products were fish products, the snacks salty, frozen pizzas, potatoes. In 2019, on the other hand, frozen food consumption exceeded the threshold of 14 kg per person, growing again compared to 2018 and following a rather stable trend since 2010.
Frozen food consumption. The IIAS Report
The framework comes from the dossier 'Frozen food consumption. 2019 Report of the Italian Frozen Food Institute (IIAS) which reviews the state of the sector. But given the pandemic, it could not avoid putting down in black and white the trend of frozen food consumption during the first four months of the year.
The coronavirus, the lockdown, the outings only to buy essential goods changed family spending. It was a stress test, in some ways, also for the frozen food chain, subjected to two opposite trends: increased home consumption and a halving or almost of out-of-home consumption, collapsed due to the closure of school and company canteens, commercial and collective catering activities, bars and public outlets.
Frozen foods in the cart, the first four months of 2020
In the first four months of 2020 there was therefore the boom of domestic consumption and the collapse of out-of-home consumption. With the lockdown there was generated ‘a rush to buy to guarantee household stock that quickly and profoundly changed the composition of food spending‘, reads the Report. Families bought pasta, rice, preserves. And they bought frozen foods. There was a demand increase higher than that of fresh products.
In the first quarter of 2020 household food expenditure increased by 7% year-on-year. In the first four months of the year, total frozen food sales retail reached over 13.5% with different increases depending on the segments: seafood marks over 16.5%, the snacks salty more 21.5%, potatoes more 12%, pizzas more 12.5% and prepared products more 5.5%.
In the second part of the year, highlights IIAS, it is expected that consumption will stabilize again. Losing instead is the entire out-of-home sector, first with the lockdown and then with an expected drop in demand that leads to talk of ‘an overall annual loss for the frozen food sector of 600-650 million euros corresponding to about a quarter of the out-of-home revenue’.
Still a different trend and positive for the door to door and theonline. Door to door records a boom, with increases in March alone of over 40%. Online sales also rise, included in the general increase ofecommerce during the entire emergency phase of the pandemic.
‘In the same context – reads the dossier – there was a spike in online sales, a relatively new purchasing method for our sector. The phenomenon is part of the boom in online trade of packaged fast-moving consumer goods, which records growth rates above 150% even in the first weeks after the early May reopenings’.
Frozen food consumption in 2019
The trend in 2019 speaks of recovering consumption. For the first time in Italy, per capita frozen food consumption exceeded the threshold of 14 kg per year (precisely 14.1 kg). These products are generally appreciated. Half of families consume frozen foods two or three times a week. Last year, all this resulted in a 1.5% increase in volumes purchased in the channel retail.
‘The result was an overall increase in consumption of +1.3%, for an absolute value of 849,900 tons, corresponding to an annual per capita consumption of over 14 kg. A better trend – as has been the case for some time – than that of the overall food expenditure of Italian households, which was +0.4% compared to 2018′.
Vegetables are the flagship of the sector and cover more than 43% of the retail. Both simple vegetables and minestrone and soups are growing, both long-cooked and recipe-based. In the consumption of frozen foods, we note in detail more than 0.5% for vegetables, more than 0.7% for potatoes, more than 1.2% for fish products, more than 2.4% for pizzas and snacks, +2.9% for prepared dishes, +2.5% for fruit and +1.1% for desserts. Meat is also growing, but it is a niche sector. Fish products increased by +1.2%, mostly driven by natural cephalopods and crustaceans (+7%), while whole fish and breaded or battered fish are declining.
Sabrina Bergamini
Notes
Spending & lockout: more masks and less dye. Frozen product consumption. Report 2019 https://www.istitutosurgelati.it/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/IIAS_REPORT_CONSUMI_2019.pdf
Journalist. Consumption, rights, nutrition, social, environment. Editor in charge at Help Consumers. Collaborated with ResetDOC, Il Riformista, La Nuova Ecologia, IMGPress.
