Processed meat, seafood and alternatives to meat has continued to record positive growth during the pandemic in Eastern Europe, with these products seen as staples in home-cooking by many households. While processed meat, and chilled processed red meat in particular, continues to lead actual sales, meat and seafood substitutes is recording the most dynamic growth, buoyed by interest in plant-based products and concerns about environmental, health and animal welfare issues.
This report comes in PPT.
Staple foods generally benefitted from the pandemic and lockdowns, with increased home-cooking boosting sales of products like processed meat and seafood. With the pandemic far from over in 2021, sales were still being buoyed to some extent by home seclusion. However, while stockpiling added to growth in 2020, consumers were no longer feeling the need to stockpile in 2021.
The fastest-growing category is meat and seafood substitutes. The growing number of people following a plant-based diet has created a platform for the broader development of the plant-based offer. Key consumer motivations for increasing plant-based eating include health, sustainability/environmental concerns and issues around animal welfare.
The pandemic, including lockdowns and fear of the virus when out in public, boosted e-commerce sales, with players investing in terms of raising delivery capacity. For example, in Poland, new services such as InPost Fresh, which operates deliveries for cash and carry chain Makro, and from delivery platform, Swyft, which guarantees deliveries of groceries within 15 minutes, helped to meet the increased demand.
Sales of processed meat, seafood and alternatives to meat will record positive growth throughout the 2016-2021 period in Eastern Europe, driven in actual sales terms by the biggest category, chilled processed red meat, although the most dynamic categories will be meat and seafood substitutes as well as tofu and derivatives. Both categories will continue to benefit from an increasing number of consumers looking for meat-free alternatives, either for health or ethical reasons, although both will be growing from small sales bases.
NOTE: Couscous, polenta and quinoa are excluded from staple foods.
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