>>UK Breakfast market still growing

The breakfast market is currently worth £1.53bn and continues to show good growth year-on-year, rising 4.6% against last year in value terms.
Volume is growing at a slower rate, highlighting the strength of the more premium and higher-priced brands in the latest year. The volume increase has predominantly come from consumers buying more per trip.
The ready-to-eat (RTE) cereals sector represents 76% of the market and is continuing to grow behind the total breakfast market rate at 2.1%. With 95% of British households buying into the RTE market, it is hard to attract new buyers. However, growth has been achieved through encouraging additional spending. The adult sector continues to drive this performance, fuelled by brand extensions rather than new product development, with new variants such as Special K Purple Berry.
Cereal bars still provide good growth within the breakfast market. They now represent nearly 16% of sales and continue to attract new households into the market and encourage additional spending through increased prices. The adult lines are driving growth through increased exposure as the strong performers successfully extend their ranges further, including Special K, Fitnesse and Alpen.
A large proportion of cereal bars continue to be consumed outside the traditional breakfast time - in the lunchbox or for snacking.
Hot cereals continue to experience impressive growth and drive the breakfast market as a whole, posting the largest peak in recent years over the winter of 2004.
This has been driven in the past year by an impressive surge in the instant porridge sector. This growth has been fuelled by Quaker, continuing to focus on the Oatso brand, and also Ready Brek, which launched the Seriously Oaty variant in October 2004.
Sales of toaster pastries have been the big loser, dropping 30.9% over the past year and now accounting for just 1.1% of the total breakfast market.
Jo Cowell, TNS Worldpanel
Produced for The Grocer by TNS Worldpanel. TNS Worldpanel monitors the grocery retailer take-home purchasing habits of 15,000 demographically representative British households. Call 020 8967 4521