To accompany this week's Focus on Frozen feature in The Grocer, this week Promotrack looks at promotional activity across the category over the past three months (12 weeks) from 1 April 2006.

For the first eight weeks of this period, the frozen category remained in fourth place in the overall category chart, but then dropped to 8th place.

The category has slowly started to move back up the chart by one place each issue, recording 5th place overall this week.

When breaking this down into branded and own label activity, the picture looks the same.

However, in the branded chart the frozen category has moved to third place this week showing a marked improvement in branded activity.

Unilever dominates the branded frozen category with its Birds Eye range accounting for 18% of total frozen activity during this period, having secured the top spot no fewer than 10 times over the past 12 issues, with its Wall's brand, at 12%, also recording solid activity, securing second and third places seven times.

The only other brand to reach number one above Birds Eye over this period was the Aunt Bessie's range. Obviously seasonality does play a part in the promotional space allocated, but despite solid activity throughout the year, Aunt Bessie's has not reached the top five for the past four issues, being overtaken by brands such as Wall's, Mars, Carte d'Or and Ben & Jerry's.

Other players with consistent activity are McCain, accounting for 17% of activity across the three months, Goodfella's at 15%, and Young's at 11%. All have been featured in the top five of every issue in this period.

Own label activity shows Tesco topping the chart, recording the most own label frozen activity across nine of the 12 weeks. In recent weeks both Sainsbury and Asda had increased frozen own label space over Tesco, but this has reverted back to Tesco in the past two weeks.

Focus on Frozen, page 45