Market overview

Northern Foods operates in large and growing markets. We focus our resources around categories where we have strong leading brands or high-growth own label positions.

We also know that long term consumer trends are in our favour, helping ensure that people will continue to buy Northern Foods products in the future.

Food trends overview

Many social, economic and demographic changes over the last decade have influenced the choice of what foods people want to eat, but three macro trends dominate: - health, convenience and indulgence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is recognised that consumers constantly make choices between the three. We start the week with good intentions, eat in a hurry when we need to, but most of us think we deserve a treat at the end of the week. Dig below these core trends and other reasons emerge. For example, provenance or authenticity of ingredients is important for some, whereas for others it is access to exotic or complex recipes they wouldn’t normally cook.

With a wide range of great tasting food which satisfies all three trends (and sometimes more than one of them at a time), Northern Foods is well positioned for growth.

Convenience

In a ‘cash rich time poor economy’, people are looking for speed and convenience in a whole range of areas including food.

The continuing increase in the number of working women, the rise in the number of single person households and busy working lives has resulted in fewer people sitting down together at the same time to eat a meal. It’s also led to an increasing number of people eating on the go. All factors which have led to the growth in the convenience foods market overall and the development of great food ideas which deliver great taste at speed. According to industry research, the sector has grown by 70% over 10 years, creating a UK market worth almost £25 billion*.

Health

Healthy eating is a high profile subject and there is no doubt that the trend for ‘healthier’ foods is growing. With an ever increasing number of diet and health-conscious consumers, food companies such as ourselves are responding with new ranges and updated recipes to meet demand.

Northern Foods is working with its brands and with its own label retail customers to provide healthier choices across the food categories it makes.   Not only are we formulating recipes to remove or reduce ingredients such as salt, fat and sugar, we are also focussing on ‘goodness in’. That can cover using so called ‘super foods’ such as berries, nuts and avocados, and increasingly, organic products, and also using named ingredients such as Wensleydale and Davidstow cheeses to provide reassurance of provenance.

We are also working to ensure the clear labelling of all products is in place to ensure that information about ‘ingredient issues’ such as salt, sugar and fat is effectively communicated.

More information about how Northern Foods is helping to promote Healthy Balanced Lifestyles can be found in Our responsibilities.

Indulgence

There is no dispute that everyone likes to indulge from time to time. For some it’s a seasonal pleasure, for others it’s a quick reward for a busy and demanding lifestyle (‘I’ve earned it’). It's been dubbed as the ‘credit/debit' approach to the way we eat. and research suggests that ‘treaters are more likely than the average person to also choose foods for health reasons’.

At Northern Foods, our response to this macro trend is to ensure that when people indulge they can choose the very best, with high quality ingredients used as a matter of course. We don’t advocate over-indulgence but we do believe that products such as our Fox's biscuits range of cookies and our Christmas pudding ranges tick every taste and quality box. 

^{* Nielsen consumer view break – stores of 3,000sq ft or less}