My thanks to Anthony Rickards @ Planet Organic for forwarding this presentation, which was delivered at this year’s Expo West trade show by Bob Anderson and Jessica Poingt of the Organic Trade Association. Key statistics US organic market worth around $32 Billion Organic food sales grew +11% over the preceding 13 weeks (non-organic food sales [...]
From the category archives:
Monthly Briefings
In March the Soil Association released their Organic Market Report 2012 . The headline figure (seized on by the media) was that sales of organic products in the UK fell by 3.7% in 2011 to £1.67 billion. However equally interesting was that sales through box schemes, home delivery and mail order increased by 7.2% to [...]
Over 500 delegates gathered in London on Friday 2nd March at an extremely well-organised and informative one day conference under the title ”Facing the future: Innovation in food and farming”. Here are the two most interesting parts of the day. Presentation from Julian Walker-Palin, Head of Corporate Sustainability, Asda Consumer research conducted with 5,300 Asda [...]
A couple of weeks ago I was walking round the extensive warehouse of HB Ingredients when I spotted a large cannister of something called Mycryo, made by Callebaut. “That” said my host Carl Martin “is cocoa butter and it is brilliant for frying eggs. Try it”. So I did, and Carl is right. When you [...]
I was interested to learn that the three UK supermarkets growing fastest at present are Aldi, Lidl and Waitrose. That is two discounters who major on low prices and a limited product selection plus our most up-market food retailer. What do they have in common?They are all very single-minded in what they do. Unlike Asda, [...]
Held at the Rudolf Steiner Centre, London OCADO Lawrence Hene Head of Grocery Retail Ocado (www.ocado.com) 1.1Market Share Organic is 10% of sales and still in growth (11% year-on-year: however total business grew by 20%) Ocado has less than 0.5% total retail shares but 5% of organic sales, ie over-trades on organic x10 Believe that [...]
Meat Free Monday (and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday and…) There is nothing more illogical than an organic vegetarian, but that is what I am. Organic farming relies upon animals to add fertility to the land during the rotation of fields. It is technically possible to farm organically without animals (so-called stockless systems) [...]
Martin Hickman www.independent.co.uk Monday, 4 April 2011 A £100m hole was knocked in sales of organic food last year as shoppers opted for cheaper produce in the economic downturn. Overall, sales fell by 5.9 per cent from £1.84bn to £1.73bn, according to research by the Soil Association, the country’s biggest certifier of organic products. The [...]
“Local Is The New Organic” is a headline from a recent edition of The Grocer. And there is no doubt that many people would like it to be so, especially supermarkets. It is much easier and cheaper to source potatoes ‘locally’ than organically. It also helps that there is no legal definition of the word [...]
Footprint Forum, London, March 7th 2011 Footprint Forum is organised by Foodservice Footprint whose remit is to address the environmental aspects of the foodservice process (more at www.foodservicefootprint.com ). Yesterday they organised an event at the NFT to consider how ethical marks and accreditation are having an impact on foodservice. Here are the some of [...]