There's a lot of attention on frozen food right now, with the credit crunch and product launches helping the much-maligned aisle to record a significant comeback. As a result, promotion has been heavy. The frozen category accounted for 10% of all featured space promotional offers last weekend.

Birds Eye continues to be the single most promoted brand, accounting for 36% of the top five frozen brands chart last weekend, 18 points clear of joint second place brands Walls and Nestlé, both fighting hard with 18% each.

Not surprisingly, with summer here it was ice cream that came out as the most promoted sub-category.

The top five frozen sub-category chart last weekend saw ice cream securing almost half of all space with 43% - more than double that of frozen fish at 21%. In third place was frozen ready meals with 19%, fourth was frozen poultry with 10% and, in fifth place, frozen meat products with 7%.

For the year to date, however, frozen ready meals continues to hold the lead with 37% of promotions, with renewed confidence in the sub-category supported by a positive story in terms of NPD and heavy promo activity from Birds Eye in particular, only slightly down this week on the 38% share of spend for the year to date. Ice cream sits in second place with 27%, where Wall's has spent heavily across the year, but Nestlé was clearly making a strong play with 18% of the spend last weekend. Frozen fish is third with 17%, meal accompaniments fourth at 10% and, trailing by just one point at fifth place is meat products with 9%.

The emphasis at the weekend was on discounts as opposed to multibuys. Save and half price were separated by only one point, with half price just stealing ahead to account for 30% of offers and save settling for second with 29%. X-for-y was used on 19% of offers, with bogof in fourth place with 16% and the introduction or special purchase price used on 5%.


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