Miller Magazine Issue: 140 August 2021

65 ARTICLE MILLER / august 2021 Overall, there has been a -8% drop in European bakery con- sumption in 2020. Packaged products have experienced over 5% growth in 2020 compared to 2019, while the consumption of fresh products has decreased by -13%. • Packaged ambient products are therefore the big winners of the pandemic, especially packaged bread, which has seen dou- ble digit growth during the first lockdown. Protective packaging has given consumers great reassurance. In many countries, pack- aged bakery products have also been favoured by supermarkets, as fresh bakery counter staff have often been assigned to other departments and many in-store laboratories have closed, at least temporarily. • Packaged to bake at home products have also benefited from the renewed interest to home-baking. • Bread has been less affected than sweet or savoury products. Gira estimates that in 2021 consumption will not come back yet to 2019 level, even if consumption may increase; and future 2025 trends are linked with the recovery of the foodservice sector. According to the last Gira 2019 study on European fresh and bake-off bakery markets, towards 2023 the foodservice sectors were expected to be the winners in fresh bakery distribution, es- pecially commercial foodservice and bakery chains. But those channels have suffered the most from lockdown, with a drop down to -38% in fresh bakery product distribution for commercial foodservice, in 2020. The social foodservice sector (-27%) and bakery chains (-18%) were also largely affected in 2020. Retail stores also saw their sales of fresh bakery products falling over 2020, but less dramatically than foodservice sectors: modern retailers were favoured as con- sumer preferred one-stop shop- ping and small retail stores have benefited from consumers’ pref- erence of neighbourhood outlets. At European level there has been a drop of -7% in fresh bakery retail sales in 2020, and down to -28% for the foodservice sectors. During 2021, under the base case scenario the foodservice sector is expected to gradually recov- er back to 2019 levels thanks to progressive reopening's. The sit- uation is expected to be almost close to normal by 4Q2021 and should recover in 2022. The COVID-19 crisis will have however longer-term impact in Quarterly Bakery Products Consumption Change in Europe, 2020 & 2021 compared to 2019 – By product and by technology (base case scenario) European bakery consumption down by 8% in 2020