
Frozen food sales grew by 1.0% in Germany in 2018 to 3,769 million tons from 3,730 million tons in 2017, according to a new report from the German Frozen Food Institute (Deutsches Tiefkühlinstitut e.V. or dti). In financial terms, frozen foods grew with 2.8% to EUR14,750bn in 2018, compared to EUR14,343bn in 2017.
Germany has a 46.3 kg average per capita consumption of frozen food. dti notes that the importance of this product category continues to grow in the country, as frozen food offers consumers convincing solutions for daily nutrition.
Data from dti has revealed that Germans prefer frozen bakery products (11 kg per capita consumption). This is followed by vegetables (6,2kg), ready meals (5,7kg), meat (5,5kg) and potatoes (5,5kg). Frozen pizza (4,2kg), fish (3,7kg) and snacks (3,3kg) are also part of the top.
In retail/home services, frozen food sales rose slightly by 2.0% in 2018 to 1,844 million tones (1,840 million tons in 2017). This amounted to a total revenue of EUR7.97bn in 2018 (2.4% increase compared to the previous year).
What’s more, frozen food has developed very positively last year in the out-of-home market and therefore it continued the success of previous years. Sales to professional users rose by 1.8% to 1,925 million tones (1,890 million tons in 2017). The segment poured EUR6.77bn into frozen food in 2018, which constitutes a 3.4% increase compared to the previous years (EUR6.55bn).
The momentum in the out-of-home business continues due to social changes but was somewhat weakened by the hot summer and variations in the workforce.