Professional food and drink buyers visiting next month’s Natural Food trade Show will be treated to a record number of new natural, organic, biodynamic, Fairtrade, free-from and special diet products for 2013, says organiser Diversified Business Communications UK.
Returning to London’s Olympia on 7-8 April, over half of this year’s New Product Showcase entries, which currently includes over 250 products (up 20% on 2012’s total) have been entered into the food, organic food, drink, and special diet categories. Notably, given that today’s announcement coincides with the launch of the Soil Association’s annual Organic Market Report, of these four showcase categories for 2013, new Organic food and drink products (to date) have the most entries of all. This rise in new innovations being launched onto the organic market reflects the continuing growth in the global sales of organic food and drink, which according to analysts Organic Monitor, has risen over 25% since 2008.
Despite the continuing economic downturn affecting all sales, not least organic products in the UK (reported by the Soil Association today to have fallen 1.5% to £1.64bn over the last year) – this year’s Organic Market Report did announce some key areas of growth. Organic catering and restaurant sales, for example, rose by 1.6% in 2012. Specialist organic suppliers, such as Ocado, Abel & Cole, Riverford, Whole Foods Market, Planet Organic, and many independent retail outlets across the UK, also saw a rise in organic sales (up 6.4% in the case of Ocado); with online sales now worth an estimated £4.1m a week. Whilst the under-35s, the so called ‘Jamie generation’, which account for 16% of all sales, are cited as having significantly increased their average spend in 2012.