Recession-proof: Frozen food

The global economic crisis has hurt the food industry as much as every other market. But as consumers returned to eating at home rather than at restaurants, sales of frozen food grew. Faced with rising food prices, consumers increasingly turn to frozen food as an alternative to chilled and fresh products, with market analysts now talking of a ‘recession-proof’ sector.

In the US, which has always been a strong market for frozen, retail sales in 2008 totalled $51.8bn, a 6.5% increase in sale for the year.

According to research published by Packaged Facts in 2009 sales are expected to rise another 25%, reaching $64.8bn in 2013.

This estimation is supported by the constantly increasing food inflation and by the most recent trend of calorie-controlled, lower-sodium, high-fibre frozen products.

Experts agree upon that this combination of healthier recipes with the convenience of frozen foods is going to be a strong sales factor in the years ahead.

Here, British Frozen Food Federation (BFFF) director-general Brian Young talks about the market outlook in the UK, how consumer perception has changed and how new freezing techniques could secure the sector’s position, even in times of prosperity.

Elisabeth Fischer: Frozen food in the US has witnessed sharp sales throughout the recession. How is the situation in the UK?

Brian Young: The frozen food market has shown growth in 19 of the last 21 quarters, which is pretty damn good. Over the last five years the market has grown from £4.4bn to £5.3bn, so it has virtually grown by £1bn. Given it took 60 years to get to the first £4bn, to add a further billion in only five years is pretty impressive.

In my view, frozen is a healthy market that is growing strongly. Undoubtedly, in recessionary times the value of frozen food is greatly appreciated by consumers.

Another reason for the strong growth is that with frozen food there is very little wastage. In the UK for example the government department, Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), is showing that consumers waste about 30% of the products they are buying. When you have no money you really can’t afford to waste food and with frozen food you don’t waste anything.

Moreover, consumers are also beginning to understand that frozen actually locks in the goodness of fruit, vegetables and fish much better than lots of other processes.

This locked-in goodness, the minimal wastage and the fantastic value are all reasons why consumers would change to frozen.

EF: How has consumer perception of frozen food changed?

BY: It has changed and is still changing as there is still some way to go. We and the industry have been putting information out to educate consumers about the benefits of frozen foods, such as higher nutritional values.

One of the barometers is also that for example Jamie Oliver is quite happy to put his name next to a range of frozen fish products produced by Young’s. Two years ago cook and TV presenter Delia Smith ran a programme about how to cheat using frozen.

We also ran a pop-up gourmet restaurant in2011 where we had Michelin-starred chefs Atul Kocher, Simon Rimmer and Galton Blackiston all preparing dishes with frozen food.

I think we are now getting more and more celebrity chefs being prepared to talk about the goodness of frozen food and there is a great deal of evidence about the value of frozen around that has been put into the public domain over the past 18 months or so.

EF: Why should consumers choose frozen over fresh food?

BY: First of all, an awful lot of fresh food is actually not that fresh.

Take the work that’s been done on fresh food such as spinach or green beans and peas for example. When they come out of the ground, they will lose 70% of their vitamin C.

With modern freezing techniques most vegetables are frozen within two hours of being harvested and keep their vitamin C. In many cases, particularly fruit and vegetables, the frozen end choice would produce more vitamins and minerals than fresh food.

Vegetables are simply washed, cleaned and blanched before being frozen and that’s all that happens.

Frozen fish, which is quite often frozen at sea within minutes of coming out of the water, is the freshest fish you could ever possibly buy.

If you contrast that with fresh, where fishing would normally take about seven days and then another three days to get back to the port. So the apparently fresh fish could be ten days or in the best case scenario four days old.

EF: How do you freeze food without changing its texture and taste?

BY: The secret to all of these things is the speed of freezing. The faster you freeze the ready meals, the vegetables, the fruit or the fish the better.

If a product is frozen very slowly it allows ice crystals to form, which will then destroy the membranes and cells of the foodstuff.

If however you freeze the product rapidly, there will be very little moisture content and ice within the food, which means that almost no damage is done.

Modern techniques and fast-freezing make taste and texture much better than it ever was and when the food is stored at temperatures of -18°C or lower that slows the natural degradation process practically to zero.

EF: How has processing changed in recent years?

BY: The freezing technology, in terms of spiral freezing, plus freezing, tunnel freezing, using liquid nitrogen, using ammonia – all these technologies have improved over recent years and indeed many producers are investing in new modern equipment and that helps the freezing process.

However, the biggest change we’ve seen over the last couple of years is more and more consolidation of the frozen food markets. In the UK we’re importing about 55-60% of all of our food needs.

We’ve got some markets, particularly for frozen in China for example, which are growing rapidly. I can imagine that the frozen food market globally will become much bigger and we’ll be an outward and inward investment in terms of frozen production.

EF: Will frozen food ever overhaul the organic food market?

BY: The frozen food market doesn’t want to follow the trend of organics. The organic food market has constantly declined in recent years and is now declining at 5% per annum.

This is a market that from 2008 has dropped by more than £25m every quarter, so we certainly don’t want to follow the trend on organic because it seems to be disappearing rapidly.

Organic food is expensive, which they justify with the fact that their products have more nutritional value. However, the Food Standards Agency, which has published some research about the benefits of organic food, has actually never found any evidence that this is the case.

They declared there is no scientific evidence whatsoever to say that organic is more nutritious than conventionally grown fruit and vegetables. I think the jury is out on organic.

EF: Will frozen food keep being successful also in times of prosperity?

BY: Personally, I think I would be a brave man to think that we will come out of the current economic wars anywhere inside the next three years. Given we’re going to have very difficult economic turns of at least three years we still expect to do very well.

Also, the long-term trends are very much in favour of frozen. We are already struggling to feed seven billion people on the planet and right now there are one billion people going to bed every night hungry.

Going forward, it is estimated that the population will double or triple. In a world where that is happening there are several things that will follow. One is that food inflation will not go away, because with more people but less food the prices will go up and food will become more and more expensive. People will turn to better options and clearly frozen is a better value option.

Also, as people start to understand that we can’t feed ourselves, they will want to minimise the amount of waste that we are all guilty of.

So from a conscience point of view, people will want to make sure that they waste less food and the best option for that is to buy frozen. Finally, I think in terms of perception, as people become more and more aware of the true facts of how frozen looks in the value of food, people will have less prejudice against frozen and consumers will continue to buy frozen.