English Archives - Irish Food & Drink

It used to be something of a fringe consideration. But now, health and nutrition has leapt up the priority list for category directors in the food industry — influencing buying decisions and dominating strategic conversations.

It follows from a growing consumer trend towards more wholesome living. Shoppers are making more conscious decisions about how they feed themselves and their families, and they’re becoming savvier too — scrutinising ingredients lists to check the health impacts of their purchases.

As a category director, your entire procurement strategy needs to adapt to a population-level shift in attitudes towards health. And as we’ll discuss, that brings both sizeable challenges and opportunities.

A snapshot of the health landscape

In recent years, once-niche health trends have shifted firmly into the mainstream. For instance:

A surge of interest in gut health has seen retailers stocking bays with probiotic yoghurts, kefir drinks, kombucha, and new probiotic-rich functional drinks.

Millions of shoppers are now filling their baskets with plant-based meats and dairy, and the plant-based market appears to be stabilising after a recent drop in sales.

Soaring sales of protein-rich products (and a booming protein bar market) reveal a desire for nutritious alternatives to quick processed snacks — fuelling gym-goers and time-pressed professionals alike.

There’s also a strong commercial reason to stock shelves with nutritious products: a large systematic review found that, on average, consumers are willing to pay a 30.7% price premium for healthier foods.

Of course, as a category director, keeping your finger on the pulse of every new health trend is tough. Not least because the landscape is changing so quickly, and attitudes and motivations towards health are so individual.

Keeping up with fast-changing tastes

Opinions on health and nutrition aren’t hard to find these days. An entire industry of influencers, podcasters, and wellness-focused celebrities is shaping and reshaping the food choices that consumers make.

As a category director, you’re under constant pressure to adapt to these changing tastes — in direct competition with an emerging industry of specialty online retailers, wellness brands, and sports nutrition companies. But it’s also not enough to just focus on mass-market health trends.

Dietary insights from wearable devices are helping drive a multi-billion dollar personalised nutrition market, diluting the idea of the ‘average’ consumer. While personalised nutrition brings complexity to procurement decisions, it also represents a huge opportunity for innovation.

For instance, by analysing dietary data and buying patterns, and by working with industry partners, category directors can develop new product ranges that are tailored to specific nutritional requirements.

It’s a constant balancing act

Of course, it’s not as simple as following the data and expanding your healthy product range.

Category directors also need to balance conflicting consumers’ wishes for healthy but cheap food — particularly during a cost-of-living crisis. In addition, supply chain disruptions and cost pressures continue to complicate procurement decisions.

But fundamentally, catering to healthy shoppers has to be a long-term priority. And stocking shelves with the right products requires a multi-faceted approach. It requires tracking the latest health and nutrition science, staying on top of consumer habits, and forging relationships with suppliers that can flex to fast-changing tastes.

At Bord Bia, we can help with that. To find out more, including how you can benefit from our industry research and supplier network, get in touch today.

“Where did this come from and is it sustainable?”

It’s a question that now holds real sway over the food choices consumers make. Increasingly, they want to know how the food they buy has been grown, harvested, manufactured, and shipped. And they want food retailers and brands to make it easy for them to find out.

As a category director, you can play a pivotal role in this process. But focusing on sustainability isn’t just important to win customer loyalty. It’s becoming increasingly vital to meet tightening industry regulations and position your organisation as an innovator.

As we’ll discuss, achieving those ambitions isn’t straightforward — especially without an industry partner.

Consumer appetites for sustainability are growing

Compared to even a decade ago, shoppers are far more aware of the environmental impact of their purchases.

According to a 2023 survey by IPSOS, 58% of Europeans consider the climate impact important when buying food and beverages. And despite a cost-of-living crisis, 2024 PwC research found that consumers are willing to pay 9.7% above average price for sustainably produced or sourced goods.

As a category director, it clearly makes commercial sense to stock your shelves with more sustainable products. But there’s also a related challenge that needs to be overcome.

A question of trust

While many consumers want to buy sustainably (and are willing to pay a premium for it), trust remains a stumbling block.

A 2023 YouGov survey found over half of global consumers are skeptical of sustainability claims of most brands.

Research by Bord Bia’s Thinking House substantiates this further, confirming that 63% of consumers want food companies to be more transparent about their carbon footprint.

To overcome these barriers of trust, category directors need to double-down on building consumer confidence and prepare for imminent legislation in the UK, EU and certain US states. In many cases, this will involve ensuring products feature credible third-party certifications to substantiate on-pack and advertising claims.

Increasingly, food retailers are also adding QR codes to packaging that allow consumers to quickly review the origin and sustainability of products. While the Yuka app lets consumers scan the existing price barcode of products to receive nutritional and environmental impact information.

Becoming eagle-eyed about ESG reporting

Accurate ESG reporting remains a stubborn industry challenge — made harder still by tightening industry regulations, where the goalposts are moving constantly. The common issue? Lack of supplier visibility.

In a 2023 survey by Harvard Business Review, 79% of food companies said they had encountered the challenge of measuring and reporting their environmental performance along various parts of the supply chain. In short, they lacked visibility into the activity of their suppliers. This problem can undermine trust, lead to incorrect reporting, and force food companies to spend time trying to trace and validate any missing supply chain data.

The fact that accurate sustainability reporting is such an industry challenge creates an opportunity to lead in a crucial area. As a category director, seeking out suppliers that can provide comprehensive and validated sustainability data can put you at a competitive advantage.

With that data, you’ll have the insights needed to select more sustainable products, identify manufacturers that are reducing waste in their packaging, and ultimately, make measurable progress on your ESG efforts. All of which can help you earn confidence from customers, investors, and stakeholders alike.

Setting the sustainability agenda: a chance to innovate

Whether it’s NGOs advocating for more sustainable farming practices or nutrition experts raising public awareness about their food choices, the shift to a more environmentally friendly food system has largely been driven from outside the industry.

And in fact, research by Bord Bia’s Thinking House has found that many of your industry peers don’t see sustainable nutrition as a top priority. Once again, this creates a chance to lead the way — by putting the tangible benefits of sustainability at the top of your own agenda.

At Bord Bia, we can support you on that journey.

For instance, we collect and aggregate clear, standardised supplier sustainability data at the national level, that is subsequently verified by a third party. And that means we can give you

granular insights into supplier activity to help you make confident procurement decisions.

To find out more, get in touch today

Origin Green, Ireland’s national food and drink sustainability programme[1], recently published new procedures and guidelines, Pathways to Net Zero, based on the United Nation’s ‘Measure, Reduce, Compensate’ model. These guidelines make carbon emission targets mandatory for food and drink manufacturers who are Origin Green verified members, as the sector seeks to accelerate its contribution to the Irish Government’s Programme for Government’s aim of carbon neutrality by 2050.

This marks a significant shift for the Origin Green programme and will see member companies go beyond reductions of energy-related emissions, to include a more comprehensive assessment of their entire carbon footprint, including value chain emissions, which incorporates all indirect emissions (scope 3), associated with food manufacturing such as freight, travel.

In order to drive impact at a large scale, Bord Bia is initially introducing this mandatory carbon emission target to Origin Green members with a turnover greater than €50m. Companies must conduct baseline assessments in 2021 to determine emissions targets from 2022 onwards. These plans will be reviewed, monitored annually, and independently verified by international specialists Mabbett.

The ‘Pathways to Net Zero’ builds on several Origin Green initiatives already in place that require members to set and deliver on clear sustainability targets as part of their five-year sustainability plans with a specific focus on raw material sourcing, manufacturing process and social sustainability.

To further information on sustainable Irish food and drink exporters please contact your local Bord Bia office for more information and supplier connections.

[1] Almost 300 food and drink companies across Ireland are verified members of Origin Green, representing over 90% of food and drink exports. To date, companies have set over 2,400 sustainability targets, reaffirming the industry’s commitment to continuous improvement. Over a five-year period – the duration of a firm’s sustainability plan – food and drink manufacturers in Ireland delivered an 11% reduction in energy use per unit of output and a 17% reduction in water use per unit of output.

Bord Bia’s recently launched study, Seafood Futures: Four Marketplaces of Tomorrow explores what viable strategic choices will create the next decade of sustainable growth for Irish seafood exporters and their customers. We have combined strategic growth models with the future scenarios and drivers of demand, to really understand what the ‘Marketplaces of Tomorrow’ might look like; four key marketplaces emerged:

Scale Biz will focus on consolidation and collaboration in the production of cheaper protein as an undifferentiated commodity.
Smart Fish will feature a hybrid approach of smart pricing and product differentiation.
Blue Ocean will leverage similar or adjacent resources to diversify into high value categories.
Green Tales will see focused differentiation within the Sustainability marketplace.

For each marketplace, the study proposed five opportunity platforms, which serve as thought starters for innovation projects with key customers. By leveraging these platforms, suppliers and customers can better connect to the needs and demands of tomorrow’s consumers and work towards a sustainable and profitable future in the marketplaces of tomorrow. If you are interested in a full debrief of this study please contact local Bord Bia office.

From a shopper insights point of view, Bord Bia’s Covid Indicators, 2020, the effects of Covid-19 resulted in an increase in the purchase of beef. Shoppers sought to replace their restaurant experience and beef, especially steak had an important role in delivering this.

After 18 months of scratch cooking, shoppers are now looking for more variation and inspiration. In the UK, Germany, Netherlands and Belgium, shoppers have wanted a change from beef. Dutch and UK shoppers are purchasing more shellfish and turkey as an alternative and in Italy and Ireland, shoppers are looking for something easier to cook than beef. Hence across the board beef shoppers need more inspiration to maintain current purchase levels. Showing examples of what the final meal could look like and highlighting the USPs of Irish origin and traceability could no doubt help inspire shoppers.

Ireland’s grass-fed messaging can help offer the variation shoppers are looking for and convince shoppers to pay extra for their beef. We are seeing the beginnings of a post-Covid bounce in concern for sustainability. Shoppers claim they intend to cut back on beef consumption in the next three years, driven primarily by concerns over animal welfare and the environmental impact of beef production. Grass-fed beef is more likely to drive future purchase of beef compared to this time last year, with three in ten beef shoppers in Sweden, UK and Germany saying they would be more likely to buy beef if it’s grass-fed, something Irish beef can claim and verify at scale.

For more information, please get in touch with danny.bowles@bordbia.ie, or your local Bord Bia office.

Every month, Bord Bia interviews 375 grocery shoppers in key European markets: Ireland, UK, Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Italy and Sweden; in order to understand key dynamics around buying proteins. We have been collecting these insights since Autumn 2019, allowing us to reliably compare trends in consumption, purchase patterns and attitudes to the same period in the year previous. For more information, you can view the headline European report here.

Bord Bia is taking a fresh new look at ‘The Future of Frozen Food in the UK’ with the launch of a new Insight Study commissioned recently.

Frozen as a category had been going through significant change prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the pandemic has accelerated many of the pre-existing trends. The framework was developed to assist Irish frozen suppliers to innovate against four distinct areas of opportunity. This applies most directly in the UK but has implications for other markets of course.

Frozen Futures Framework

Developed throughout the research process, this framework was built, validated and refined so that it would be as applicable as possible to the wider frozen category, while also still having some sub-category focus.

The Frozen Futures Framework has four Futures, which are spread across different dimensions – from Surprising Value to Natural Goodness, and Flexible Friend to Permissible Pleasure.

The Framework focuses on four key spaces that can be tapped into by frozen suppliers and customers. These spaces are: Better Than You Think; Better For You; Better For the World; Better Choice. They highlight individual benefits associated with frozen food, with the aim of proving to consumers that they are making the right choice by choosing frozen.

Customers who would like to know more about how Ireland’s frozen suppliers are engaging with the future of the category can review the full report here or contact local Bord Bia office .

Origin Green is the world’s first and only national food industry-wide sustainability programme and nine years after its initial launch a recent study shows the commercial impact it is delivering for its members.

87% of respondents agreed that Origin Green is a catalyst towards continuous improvement of sustainability performance. In addition, 90% agree that Origin Green supported the putting in place of a framework to help measure and report sustainability performance. However, not only has Origin Green played a role in the development of sustainability performance but it has also resulted in 42% of respondents noting cost savings and a further, 22% of respondents attributed new revenue generation to their independently audited sustainability credentials.

For further information on sustainable Irish food and drink exporters please contact your local Bord Bia office for more information and supplier connections.

Bord Bia is co-hosting the prestigious World Steak Challenge again in Dublin this November. These awards represent an opportunity to recognise and showcase the leading producers and suppliers of excellent quality beef globally.

All of the steak entries will be assessed under tightly controlled conditions by a “blind” tasting panel in Dublin’s FIRE restaurant. This panel will consist of more than 50 independent international judges, including chefs, butchers and other meat experts. Based on their assessment, the best performing entries will be awarded gold, silver or bronze medals, across the respective categories which include World’s Best Sirloin, World’s Best Rib-Eye, World’s Best Fillet, Best Grain-fed and Best Grass-fed, alongside the overall World’s Best Steak title. Following judging in early November, competition winners will be announced at a hybrid event, and on the official WSC website.

In 2019, the event attracted a record number of entries from around the world: with competitors spanning 26 countries and 4 continents. Last time, Irish beef won over 75 medals, more than any other single country, including the “World’s Best Fillet Steak”. The awards, which are organised by William Reed Business Media, were postponed last year on account of the global Covid-19 pandemic. It is anticipated that Irish beef companies will again compete strongly for the medals.