Bangers go upmarket with an ethnic twist
using other combinations of meat and flavours such as duck, orange,
lemongrass to tweak the humble banger for more upmarket tastes --
and pockets.
David Bird a consumer analyst at Mintel says the industry has fought back to regain and grow its market after falling afoul of the sausage's association as being a container filled with poorquality meat and fillers.
"The growth is coming in the premium market," he told FoodProductionDaily.com. "They are using prime cuts of pork meat."
This year UK consumers will plough through an estimated 189,000 tonnes of sausages, with retail sales valued at £530m, according to Bird's forecasts in a report by Mintel. That's a 23 per centincrease in value and a 17 per cent increase in volume since 2000. Last year growth by value was three per cent and growth by volume was 2.2 per cent compared to 2003.
He added in his report: "Indeed, manufacturers today are reinventing sausages as posh-nosh with quality-led production, after the association with mechanically recovered meat and cheapfillers tarnished the perception of this humble British staple."
He noted that sausage processing sector has been consolidating like the rest of the food industry and that fewer makers were competing in the growing market. Many of the companies are Danish, Dutchand Irish owned.
Danish Crown, Europe's largest meat producer and exporter is a big player in the UK sausage market through Tulip Ltd. Other producers include Kerry Foods, Grampian and Cranswick Country Foods.
Kerry Foods is believed to be the largest processor, holding a 30 per cent share in the sausage market.
Processors are making their sausages using the traditional recipes leek pork and apple or pork and leek. They have also taken their cue from the rise in the popularity of ethnic foods, addingcombinations like red Thai and lemongrass.
The organic sausage market is also a growing niche although it remains a small part of the overall consumption, Bird said.
"Organic sausages are quite popular with the outdoors crowd at the barbeque. It goes with the setting," he said.
However at the bottom the food makers still rely on the staple sausage as the bottom line for their sales. The standard sausage had a 55 per cent share of the £516 market by value in 2004,representing a 8.3 per cent growth compared to 2002.
Premium sausages held a 32.2 per cent market share in 2004, a 21.2 per cent growth over the same two-year period. Low-fat sausages held a 7.4 per cent market share, a 15.2 per cent growth, whilethe lowly economy sausage held a 4.5 per cent market share, a growth of 4.5 per cent over two years.
Microwave sausages held a 0.2 per cent share of the market and showed stagnant growth.
"Although many bangers may have taken on a more exotic guise, two in five adults always try to buy British sausages and bacon where possible and so it is unlikely that this old favouritewill ever lose it's true Britishness," Bird said in his report.
