FROZEN PRODUCTS

French consumers also adopted frozen food a long time ago. Today, these products are part of their everyday consumption: on average, 98.6% of households buy frozen food, with families spending €223 a year on it in 2016. In total, the frozen food market is worth €9 billion of revenue in France. In volume, this represents nearly 2 million tonnes of goods, according to Syndigel.

Unprepared products

Benefiting from a more positive image than ultra-processed products, unprepared products are one of the pillars of the frozen food market in France. Potatoes in all their forms occupy the top spot in the list, making up 20.2% of frozen food sales in France.

Vegetables are also popular, arriving in second place in French market sales. From carrots and onions to broccoli, cauliflower and courgettes, frozen vegetables account for 19.1% of the sales in the sector.

Fish, however, does not encounter the same success. With the exception of cod, always popular with consumers, all other types of frozen fish have seen their sales drop in France.

Overall, frozen seafood is becoming less popular: between 2014 and 2017, purchases fell by €12.9 million. This makes it the fastest declining frozen food category in France in recent years.

The same observation can be made for frozen meat and cold cuts, which are losing appeal among French consumers. Between 2014 and 2017, their sales dropped by €5.5 million.

Ready-made dishes

Taken alone, the frozen ready-made dish market was worth €5 billion in sales in 2019. But fortunes vary in this segment. Frozen pizzas saw their sales rise by 5% in 2016, a reminder of the fact that France is the world’s second biggest pizza consumer behind the United States.

Potato-based products and ready meals that can be cooked in several minutes also saw their sales rise by 1.5% and 0.9% respectively. The strongest growth relates to frozen appetiser products, whose sales rose by 7.6% in the space of a year, according to data from Kantar Worldpanel.

Meanwhile, other categories have shrunk in recent years in France. This is the case with manufactured products containing meat (beef, poultry, game or other), which saw their sales go down by 3% in 2016.

It must be said that until quite recently, consumers have been distinctly wary if not hostile to prepared meals in general, and particularly those based around meat.This can be attributed to various food scandals, including the lasagne horsemeat scare which was revealed to the general public in 2013.

Since then, manufacturers have made the necessary adjustments to fulfil the expectations of consumers, by becoming more stringent in their manufacturing processes. As a consequence, consumer trust is returning little by little and 2019 is set to be a good year for the sector. According to forecasts by Xerfi, frozen prepared meals should see their sales rise by 2.5% over a year, continuing the upward trend first observed in 2018.

Bread, desserts and ice cream

Ice cream continues to be a big hit with consumers. In 2018, the turnover of the category rose by 7.8% to more than €997 million. Ice cream desserts are mainly consumed during the summer during the hottest weather, but also at the end of the year with frozen yule logs.

This increase in sales should however be put into perspective. Previous years have not always been healthy for ice creams and frozen desserts in France. Between 2014 and 2017, the sales of these products literally collapsed, dropping by €5.9 million.

Bread, meanwhile, is on the rise: a trend that has been in evidence for several years.