SEAFOODNEWS.COM BY John Sackton — January 20, 2014 — The final day of the NFI Global Seafood Market conference last week focused on retail and foodservice data about seafood.
Although Sherry Frey from the Nielsen Perishable group spoke mostly about longer term trends affecting seafood, she also presented some very encouraging 2013 data.
Some of the highlights included:
– Fresh fish growth outpaced all other retail categories except produce in value, and outpaced meat (beef, pork, chicken) 4 to 1 in volume growth, meaning seafood volume continued to grow at retail last year, while beef and other meat categories were basically stagnant.
Second, the rankings within seafood saw the biggest volume growth in crabs and fin fish, while shrimp volumes remained flat.
However, with shrimp volumes flat despite a 5% price increase at overall retail (through Nov. 30th), the fact that volume did not fall, except for cooked shrimp, was a very positive sign.
Further, anecdotal evidence at the conference suggested the retailers had managed their shrimp inventories very carefully, and sellers reported good demand in January to restock.
Although the superbowl, valentines day, and Lent data are all to come, the first indications are that US consumers are going to continue to buy shrimp even as prices increase.
The other 2013 success story was crabs – largely due to retailers fears about shrimp price increases. Almost every major retailer increased their crab promotions last year, and as a category crab (including snow crab, king crab and other crabs) jumped 13.8% in dollars and 16.9% in volume. Nielsen pegs this category at $320 million in annual retail sales (excluding some of the club stores that do not participate in Nielsen store level data).
So the question of what is creating the current high level of demand for snow crab in the US is not a mystery – it is the increase in retail sales given promotions on this category.
Cod was another success story in finish – with dollar volume rising 13.1% and tonnage rising 16.7%. This trend should continue in 2014 as more retailers take advantage of cod availability.
We cover these stories in our accompanying video here as well.
This story originally appeared on Seafood.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.