How red meat performed in December in UK

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’ ...