The crème de la crème of snacking

By: Szalai László Date: 2022. 10. 31. 10:23

After the temporary slowdown of last year, 2022 brought a double-digit sales growth in the milk dessert category. The engines of growth were the cottage cheese cream and pudding segments, which can perfectly satisfy the healthy home snacking needs of consumers. Meanwhile the demand dropped for the chilled milk dessert variants of classic confectionery shop desserts, which had increased during the pandemic when confectioneries were closed.

Healthy and safe

Enikő Bolyós
head of retail and sales force
Danone Magyarország

COVID accelerated some already existing consumption trend and induced new ones. Enikő Bolyós, Danone Magyarország Kft.’s head of retail and sales force: “Demand for healthy and safe products has been growing in the last few years. There are two big trends: reducing or avoiding sugar intake, and the consumption of free-from foods. As part of the latter plant-based foods now reach a wider group of consumers than before.” Consumer demand became bigger for first-price and economical family-sized products.

The dairy product category is very innovative, and Danone Magyarország Kft.’s mission is to provide shoppers with healthy foods. They are present in almost every segment of the yogurt and milk dessert categories. Actimel, Activia, Oikos and Danette are the flagship brands, together with Alpro in the plant-based category. Several new innovations were launched this year and more will follow – new products, flavours and formats. The company sees great potential in the plant-based category.

Recession-proof brand building

Barbara Harangozó
senior brand manager
FrieslandCampina

FrieslandCampina gave stable support to its brands, for instance Milli Krémtúró, during COVID too, and thanks to this strategy the company was able to stay the market leader after the pandemic as well. Barbara Harangozó, FrieslandCampina Hungária Zrt.’s senior brand manager: “In the first half of the year Milli milk desserts performed above last year’s level, and the new Pöttyös Túródesszert cottage cheese dessert range strengthened our company’s market position further.”

The senior brand manager revealed that private label products were strengthening month after month in the first half of 2022, but the presence of the company’s strong Milli and Pöttyös brands in the discount supermarket channel was able to stop this expansion. At the end of last year FrieslandCampina Hungária Zrt. had rolled out the 0% added sugar variant of the Milli Vanilla Krémtúró cottage cheese cream, which proved to be so successful that an apricot-biscuit version followed. In the pudding segment the company is present with Milli chocolate and vanilla puddings, and with the Milli Italian Dessert range (Tiramisu, Profiterol and Limoncello). //

Milk desserts stay strong

In the first half of 2022 FMCG inflation was bigger than 15%, while in the milk dessert category it was a bit below 14%.

GfK-Growth from Knowledge

Albert Szőke
senior product consultant
ConsumerPanel Services
GfK Hungária

Shoppers’ reaction to the FMCG price increase was producing lower volume sales, and turning towards cheaper products. However, milk dessert volume sales grew and the market shifted in the direction of more expensive products. Milk dessert won new buyers and the level of penetration increased very much. Although the average shopper purchased a little less in terms of quantity, this was completely normal at this penetration growth rate. Promotions became a little bit more important than they had been: 32% of volume sales were realised in promotion in the first half of 2022, as opposed to 28% one year earlier. Milk dessert buyers didn’t start visiting cheaper retail channels: although FMCG sales by discounters are growing even faster than before, in milk dessert sales it was supermarkets that increased their share. //