7. Down the can: £142m wiped off sales since 2013

One of our 10 Things You Need To Know About… Canned Goods

More than £140m has been wiped off the canned goods category since January 2013, with half of this loss occurring in the past year [Kantar Worldpanel 5 y/e 1 January 2017].

This is in stark contrast to grocery in general, whose sales rose by 4.4% over the same period, alongside the majority of other ambient categories. Sweet home cooking was the only other one to see a decline, which suffered a 4.8% drop in sales primarily driven by sugar.

Sweet treats topped the list with the biggest gains coming from take-home confectionery (+7.7%), with impressive performances by biscuits (+4.2%) and savoury snacks (+7.4%).

“Within ambient, canned is the worst performing category over the last five years,” explains Kantar analyst Will Sohler. “The canned goods market has been in continual decline since 2014 and value is down 6.1% on 2013. Price has been a factor of decline for almost two years now – it is the main source of decline along with volume per trip.”

Within canned, the past year has been toughest on soup and fish, which saw combined losses of £43.7m. Baked beans along with canned hot and cold meats also suffered steep losses. Only tomatoes bucked the trend, thanks mostly to passata.

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