Birds Eye has lost market share in frozen foods despite healthy growth in revenues, according to the group’s latest accounts.
The frozen food manufacturer boosted revenues 11% to £837m in the year ended 31 December 2023. However, the wider frozen category grew 15% due to widespread price hikes, according to Kantar data.
Pre-tax profits rose 28% to £131m last year as the business improved margins.
Its operating margin of 14.3% remains significantly higher than pre-pandemic levels, when it was consistently below 5%.
Birds Eye has faced stiff competition since new brands began piling into the category in pursuit of shoppers who turned to frozen foods to save money through the cost of living crisis.
The group said it was still not seeing shoppers revert to pre-inflationary habits as they continued to try and save money by making smaller, less frequent trips, reducing overall grocery spend, switching to discounters and, increasingly, trading down to own label.
Own label is clearly on the march in frozen with volumes up 3.3% in 2023, according to Kantar, meaning it now accounts for almost two in three frozen products sold in the UK. Sales of branded lines, by contrast, fell 4.2% in 2023.
Its latest accounts show Birds Eye has made cuts to its carbon emissions, where, despite a small rise in Scope 1 emissions, it cut its carbon intensity by 16% last year, based on the amount of CO2 per tonne of production.
The fall was largely driven by Scope 3 emissions – sitting outside the company’s direct supply chain – which fell 30%, the accounts say.
Birds Eye appointed a new finance director for UK & Ireland in April, as well as a new country manager to take responsibility for the Birds Eye, Aunt Bessie’s and Goodfella’s brands.
Later in the year, it relaunched packaging in the “biggest redesign in over a decade” to make its products “more uniform and easier for shoppers to find in store”.
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