>>Growth of UK Home Baking Market

With a successful mix of traditional and convenient products, the home baking category has enjoyed an excellent year. It has added £36.5m on last year, equating to a strong double-digit growth rate of 14%.
There are two main sectors responsible for this good performance. With the current focus on health, it’s no surprise that these sectors are both fruit-based. Baking fruit is up 17% in value, while snacking fruit is up 22%.
Both sectors have attracted an additional one million households into their categories.
In the case of snacking fruit, this has been due to the increased prominence of dual sitings, where it is featured in the traditional fruit and veg section as well as in the snacking section of a supermarket.
This has allowed it to appeal much more to the impulse consumer - a prerequisite for snacking-orientated products to be successful.
To understand the reasons behind these market movements, we need to look at the consumer measures. In doing so, we see that the home baking market has a high penetration of 82%. That translates to more than 20 million households that buy into this market, representing a market approaching saturation. The potential for future growth will be to encourage cross-purchasing across sectors.
Increased promotional activity has played its part. Promotional volume accounted for 9.5% of the market last year; this year the figure is 11.5%. There has been a notable shift away from the ‘extra free’ dynamic and towards temporary price reductions.
The balance between own label and brands hasn’t shifted since last year - the market remains two-thirds own label. Whitworths is now the leading brand in home baking.
From the retail perspective, growth is coming from Tesco, Holland & Barrett and Waitrose, while underperformers include Sainsbury, Morrisons and Somerfield.
Rick Storey, TNS Superpanel
Produced for The Grocer by TNS Superpanel. For more information call 020 8967 4521