Canned goods: Top Products 2019

Is canned food able to sell itself to a fresh audience? That’s the question being posed by brands as they look back on a mostly stagnant year. Aside from veg, value fell in all of the canned sectors measured in this report.

Canned fruit, down £1.6m on a 3.2% volume decline, is a prime example of the struggles faced by the market. “It’s a bit of a forgotten category. It’s something your mother might have used,” admits Martin Tilney, commercial director UK&I at Del Monte Europe.

“The category has been a tough one for the past 10 to 15 years as consumers have moved from canned products to fresh.”

For its part, Del Monte has bucked the trend with a highly respectable £4.6m gain. Innovation may have played a part – the brand won a Grocer New Product Award this year for its Gold Pineapple Chunks.

Is canned food able to sell itself to a fresh audience? That’s the question being posed by brands as they look back on a mostly stagnant year. Aside from veg, value fell in all of the canned sectors measured in this report.

Canned fruit, down £1.6m on a 3.2% volume decline, is a prime example of the struggles faced by the market. “It’s a bit of a forgotten category. It’s something your mother might have used,” admits Martin Tilney, commercial director UK&I at Del Monte Europe.

“The category has been a tough one for the past 10 to 15 years as consumers have moved from canned products to fresh.”

For its part, Del Monte has bucked the trend with a highly respectable £4.6m gain. Innovation may have played a part – the brand won a Grocer New Product Award this year for its Gold Pineapple Chunks.

Still, Del Monte’s Tilney believes the real growth will come from better explaining the benefits of canned food. The freshness inherent in the canning process isn’t currently understood by consumers, he says. “In focus groups, they think it must have a lot of preservatives.” Del Monte is focusing more of its marketing on millennials, and it’s “beginning to resonate” he claims.

It’s certainly doing better than many of its rivals. Dole’s value fell by more than 10%. And Princes suffered a devastating 18.3% blow, which is being countered with “usage-led product development and innovation” according to marketing director Alan Eriksen.

It’s part of a lacklustre performance for Princes pretty much across the board. In meat, the brand delivered a 4.1% value gain, but only as the result of price hikes. Meanwhile, the brand’s canned fish suffered a 15% dent to volumes and its Hunger Breaks beans line fell 9.8%. Still, Princes isn’t taking that lying down. In April, the company announced a £5m rebrand across its entire portfolio. That will be backed by a major campaign early next year “to secure the longevity of the brand and its contribution to the area”, says Eriksen.

That boost couldn’t come a moment too soon. For Princes is a key player in categories that are leaking value. Canned meat, for instance, is down £2.1m despite a 3.2% rise in volumes.

It’s a similar story in canned fish, which suffered a 1.3% drop in value despite a 4.1% increase in volumes. Princes’ Eriksen says that is “largely due to strong own-label strategies”. Indeed, own-label fish held on to its value, while brands were entirely responsible for the £5.1m slump.

Over in beans, value is also suffering. The category shed £4.8m despite a 2.8% increase in volumes. Again, own label held onto its value while brands felt the pain. Here, the slump was largely down to market leader Heinz, which lost a sizeable £4.2m. That came alongside a decrease in Heinz pasta sales, though by a far more modest sum of £436k.

Heinz attributes this performance to image problems within the canned category – especially pasta. “Concerns from parents regarding the uncertainty of sugar and nutritional content of the pasta they are serving their children has led to some choosing to opt out of the category or serve it less regularly,” says Holly Gale, brand manager for Heinz pasta.

The brand is clearly working to shed those unhealthy connotations across its portfolio. In August, Heinz refreshed its Baked Beanz packaging for the first time in five years to market beans as ‘one of your 5 a day’. This message works alongside No Added Sugar variants to give families an “alternate choice”, Gale says.

Going down this route could prove a winner. Because being one of your 5 a day seems to have worked wonders for veg, the only canned category to see value growth this year. It amassed an extra £16.4m on volumes up 3.8%. Here, Princes has scored a winner with its Napolina brand, up £4.1m.

“The combination of consumers’ increasing health focus and tomatoes’ position as a nutritious and versatile cupboard staple is ensuring that they remain ever popular with UK consumers,” says Neil Brownbill, Princes’ commercial director of Italian products.

The dream is for that healthy and versatile image to make its way to other areas of the canned market. Heinz’s Gale wants consumers to finally wake up to the canned category’s “long shelf life, natural nutrition retention and great taste”.

Princes is pushing for a “reappraisal” of canned produce so the category can “remain relevant and continue to grow”.

And Del Monte’s Tilney wants to push “the real USPs” of the format. “It’s about getting that message across.”

The Top Products

 In association with nielsen

Top 10 canned veg
				£m	change (£m)	change (%)
			Total Category:	572.4	16.4	2.9
Total volume change:	3.8%		Total Own Label:	152.3	9.4	6.6
This year’s rank	Last year’s rank	Brand	Manufacturer	£m	change (£m)	change (%)
1	1	Napolina	Princes	69.9	4.1	6.2
2	2	Green Giant	General Mills	45.3	-4.8	-9.6
3	3	Batchelors	Princes	13.4	0.0	-0.4
4	5	Baxters	Baxters	11.3	-0.3	-2.2
5	4	Cirio	Conserve Italia	11.0	-0.7	-6.0
6	6	Ktc	KTC Edibles	9.5	0.6	6.9
7	8	Merchant Gourmet	Merchant Gourmet	6.6	1.1	19.0
8	7	Old El Paso	General Mills	6.3	0.6	11.2
9	9	Mrs. Elswood	Mrs. Elswood	5.5	0.1	1.4
10	11	Farrows	Princes	4.6	-0.1	-2.0

 

Top 5 canned fruit
				£m	change (£m)	change (%)
			Total Category:	112.9	-1.6	-1.4
Total volume change:	-3.2%		Total Own Label:	49.6	-3.3	-6.3
This year’s rank	Last year’s rank	Brand	Manufacturer	£m	change (£m)	change (%)
1	1	Del Monte	Del Monte	30.8	4.6	17.8
2	2	Nature’s Finest	Nature’s Finest Food Products	11.2	0.3	2.9
3	3	Princes	Princes	8.8	-2.0	-18.3
4	4	Dole	Dole	7.1	-0.9	-10.7
5	5	Opies	Bennett Opie	2.5	-0.1	-5.4

 

Top 10 canned fish
				£m	change (£m)	change (%)
			Total Category:	396.5	-5.1	-1.3
Total volume change:	4.1%		Total Own Label:	153.7	0.0	0.0
This year’s rank	Last year’s rank	Brand	Manufacturer	£m	change (£m)	change (%)
1	1	John West	John West Foods	151.1	-2.5	-1.6
2	2	Princes	Princes	69.2	-2.9	-4.0
3	3	Glenryck	Glenryck	5.8	0.0	-0.2
4	5	Kingfisher	Lovering Foods	3.7	0.4	12.8
5	4	Parsons	Parons FJ	3.3	-0.1	-4.1
6	7	Cawoods	Cawoods	1.4	0.1	8.4
7	6	Graal	Graal	1.3	0.1	5.7
8	8	Elsinore	Elsinore	1.2	0.0	-0.9
9	11	The Reel Fish	The Reel Fish Co	0.9	0.2	21.3
10	9	Brunswick	Bumble Bee Foods	0.8	0.0	-2.7

 

Top 10 canned meat
				£m	change (£m)	change (%)
			Total Category:	165.4	-2.1	-1.3
Total volume change:	3.2%		Total Own Label:	41.1	-2.5	-5.8
This year’s rank	Last year’s rank	Brand	Manufacturer	£m	change (£m)	change (%)
1	1	Princes	Princes	48.3	1.9	4.1
2	3	Fray Bentos	Baxters	14.8	-0.4	-2.8
3	2	Ye Olde Oak	Ye Olde Oak Foods	14.1	-1.3	-8.4
4	4	Spam	Hormel	13.7	0.3	2.1
5	5	Pek	Smithfield	7.6	0.4	5.7
6	6	Wikinger	Wikinger	5.6	-0.7	-11.3
7	7	Kingsfood	Ye Olde Oak Foods	5.3	0.2	3.9
8	8	Böklunder	Böklunder	4.5	0.3	6.2
9	9	Stagg	Tulip	2.8	0.3	11.5
10	10	Bastides	Bastides	1.9	0.1	6.5

 

Top 5 canned beans
				£m	change (£m)	change (%)
			Total Category:	296.8	-4.8	-1.6
Total volume change:	2.1%		Total Own Label:	53.4	-0.5	-0.8
This year’s rank	Last year’s rank	Brand	Manufacturer	£m	change (£m)	change (%)
1	1	Heinz	Kraft Heinz Co	203.2	-4.2	-2.0
2	2	Branston	Princes	33.1	0.0	0.1
3	3	Hunger Breaks	Princes	3.5	-0.4	-9.8
4	4	Weight Watchers	Kraft Heinz Co	1.6	-0.1	-5.5
5	6	Pamapol	Pamapol	0.3	0.1	24.9

 

Top 5 canned pasta
				£m	change (£m)	change (%)
			Total Category:	74.0	-1.2	-1.6
Total volume change:	-3.8%		Total Own Label:	12.0	-0.3	-2.8
This year’s rank	Last year’s rank	Brand	Manufacturer	£m	change (£m)	change (%)
1	1	Heinz	Kraft Heinz Company	60.4	-0.4	-0.7
2	2	Branston	Mizkan	0.6	-0.3	-35.0
3	3	Crosse & Blackwell	Princes	0.6	-0.1	-10.4
4	4	Weight Watchers	Kraft Heinz Company	0.2	-0.1	-29.6
5	5	Happy Shopper	Booker	0.2	0.0	6.4

The Grocer’s Top Launch

Fray Bentos Vegetable Balti by Baxters

As a growing number of Brits reduce their meat consumption, how does a brand best-known for beef-filled pies respond? With a mix of red peppers, tomatoes, peas and carrots in a spicy balti sauce and topped with the usual puff pastry crust, of course. “Tastes have changed, and we’ve listened to Fray fans,” Baxters said at the launch. The brand followed that up with a Cheese & Onion variant, and a soya-based Vegan Steak & Kidney Bean pie that received an award from PETA. Champion!