UK: How did red meat performed in December?
As forecasted by AHDB, shoppers managed to treat themselves while managing their budgets. They continued to trade down from brands to private label, while the discounters (Aldi and Lidl) remained the fastest growing grocers. Within this, there was still a positive performance for premium private label, while the men’s World Cup boosted the take-home beer market.
Overall volumes of meat, fish and poultry (MFP) were largely flat (-0.3%) in the month of December, with total volumes of red meat seeing marginal gains. Given the total grocery context of -1% volumes, this is a real positive for the category.
Within this, it was a largely positive Christmas for red meat roasting joints, with lamb, beef and gammon joints all in year-on-year volume growth. Pork roasting was the only exception to this, with the 3.4% decline driven by leg and loin joints, while shoulder joints remained in growth.
Despite this, pork roasting volumes were up nearly 9% when compared to 2019, the last ‘normal’ Christmas. In addition to this, pork and gammon combined accounted for just under a quarter of all roasting volumes in December.
Lamb was the standout performer, with both leg and shoulder joints gaining. Leg roasting volumes increased by 10.6%, while shoulder rose by 3.9%. The gains for leg roasting joints even put volumes ahead of 2019.
Chicken was the main challenger to red meat and turkey, with volumes of whole chickens rising 11.9% year-on-year. This resulted in it accounting for 23% of roasting volumes in December, an increase of two percentage points year-on-year. Despite the price of whole chickens rising 11.0% over this period, it remains much lower in cost than other proteins, and this volume increase continues a trend seen in recent months.
With warnings of supply issues in the run-up to Christmas, whole turkey volumes took a significant hit, down 13.2%. Crowns and smaller turkey joints experienced an uplift in volume of 4.8%, reflecting a trend seen in previous years, with shoppers moving to smaller joints. However, this wasn’t enough to compensate for the whole turkey losses, and overall roasting volumes for turkey were down 3.2% versus 2021 and 20.6% versus 2019.
With Kantar’s measure of grocery price inflation standing at 14.4% in December, prices were up across the board. Pork roasting experienced the largest overall increase in price, linked to a reduction in promotions. While lamb roasting remains the most expensive meat, it had the smallest year-on-year increase in average price. The volume of lamb sold on promotion was up slightly (at 49%), but it was the depth of discount that rose and likely enticed shoppers to the category.
This highlights how promotional activity can be used to attract shoppers to more expensive cuts, despite the cost-of-living backdrop. Prior to Christmas, lamb in particular had been struggling with volume losses. Given that 59% of consumers say their household finances have worsened in recent months (AHDB/YouGov Tracker, Nov 22), it’s unlikely that these volume uplifts will continue into 2023.
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