New Bakery and Confectionery Product Launches Drop in the UK

The launching of new products has started to decline in the past years, as supermarkets across the UK continued to cut the number of products they stock, according to a report by IRI. 

Looking across food categories, the trend is consistently downward: for breakfast cereals, by 7.2% (change in number of items/store); for the bread and bakery category, by 5.6%: for the confectionery assortments by 5.4%, and for the biscuits category by 5.4%.

The sales of branded new products were downby6.5%, which equated to losses in revenue from new product development (NPD) of GBP99.6mn.

The IRI study shows that the number of NPD brand launches fell by 8.4% in the past 12 months.

The study also shows that product range has declined by 5.7% in the past year, following a decline of 5.1% the previous year – which means a two-year decline of 10.5%.

The report reveals that 1,820 products have been removed from an average sized multiple store over the past two years, and 930 of these in the latest year.

The number of branded NPD launches was in decline by 8.4% in the last year, while own label launches have fallen by 2%.

Only one in 26 new products achieved distribution in multiple stores in their first 12 weeks and only 50% of all new products achieved more than 33% distribution in multiples. 

The average price premium at which NPD is launched for first 4 weeks versus the category average is 45%.   

Within a year of launch, 7% of all NPD is delisted, while 34 weeks is their average length of listing, according to the study.