Given their convenience factor, it is no surprise that ready meals have experienced the highest value growth ­ 7% ­ and this has been driven by launches in the form of both new flavours for existing products and completely new brands. Heinz Weight Watchers are the best selling meals with growth of 6%, although the Birds Eye brand dominates the top ten. Healthy meals as a sector has not only achieved the greatest growth within ready meals, but also within the total frozen food market as a whole. Birds Eye healthy meals in particular have shown good growth at over 25%, boosted by 97% Fat Free meals, sales of which are up by 45%. One of the major new launches of the year was the Enjoy! range from Birds Eye in February. Backed by a £15m campaign using 11 different marketing channels, this represented the UK's biggest grocery launch to date. In particular, the Thai Chicken ready meal has performed well. Findus launched Feeling Great!, its own range of healthy convenient meals for busy people', in April. Meanwhile, frozen fish has experienced both value and volume growth, achieving 3% and 6% respectively as consumers have been tempted towards trying more fish following high profile food scares, including foot and mouth disease. Shortages of traditional fish, including cod and haddock, are likely to push prices up in the future, which may indicate a continuing increase in value. Birds Eye premium fish fingers remain ever popular with growth of almost 4%. In addition to its cod fish fingers, Birds Eye will also launch a Marine Stewardship Council-certified Hoki fish finger in order to protect the predicted limited supply of cod. Frozen roast potatoes have continued to grow in popularity, with sales of Aunt Bessie's increasing by 43%. McCain's version is not far behind and this sector is likely to continue growing as the concept catches on. Also driving growth are McCain Wedges, which have almost doubled their value. As time becomes more precious, microwaveable foods have become more popular. McCain Micro Chips have shown almost 16% growth, helped by the launch of a Mega Micro Chips this year. Available in 220g boxes, this chunky chip version is ready to eat in five minutes. McCain Micro Pizzas have seen value increasing by 9% and individual pizza pies have also proved popular with the Chicago Town version growing by 25% to become the best selling brand this year. A number of launches in the oven baked pizza sector have encouraged innovation and a trend towards improved quality. The Goodfella's Stone Baked Ciabatta style pizza was launched in November after two-and-a-half years in product development. The £7m launch campaign features mainly in-store activity. Launched in September, the Pizza-Pleasure range from Heinz was aimed at households currently not buying frozen pizza due to a perception of low quality. The Heinz pizza claims to have a light and crispy base and an even distribution of topping. Frozen desserts continue to decline in value although volume is not declining at the same rate, experiencing only a 3% drop. The dessert sector is heavily promoted with nearly 60% of volume sold on deal. While Sara Lee meringue desserts are growing, it is hoping the decline in value of its Danish Pastries can be reversed with new packaging which hit the shelves at the beginning of November. {{P&P }}

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