Remarks on the frozen ready-made meal market review
— 2015-06-01 —

Vice President of “Produkty Pitania” Company Damir Imamovic:

Which categories of ready-made meals have higher rate of growth: first and second courses, ready-made meals in trays and ready-made meals in bags, single-portion and multi-portion meals? And what are the reasons for that?

There is no official statitics on this issue. There are some data only from certain retail chains and producers. Whether we can judge the whole group of frozen ready-made meals by fragmentary data is an open question.

What concerns ready-made meals in bags, these are, generally speaking, mixed vegetables which contain up to 30-40% of additional components (rice, seafood, livestock meat, fowl, etc.). Because of embargo consequences this market sector has suffered much and lost 50-60%. Multi-portion frozen ready-made meals have not fit in with retail trade. At the moment these products go much better together with HoReCa. Due to crisis this market sector, undoubtedly, will lose (if just for decline in business activity and demand for catering services) but not more than 15-20%. For today, ready-made meals in trays are the major offer on the market of frozen ready-made meals. The trays may be used as plates or containers for cooking which is very convenient when using an oven or a microwave oven. Currently such meals are the most stable and promising sector of the frozen ready-made meal market which we extensively develop in our company. Under TM “Rossiyskaya Korona” we produce ready-made meals and lasagna which have proved to be high-quality products. And basic advantages of this lineup are naturalness, homelike taste, traditional recipes and simplicity of cooking. We will keep developing this segment and maintaining consistent high quality of our production.

Despite the strong Russian tradition of soup consumption, the demand for second courses is obviously higher and this market sector is developing more rapidly. Even in present economic conditions we may expect the tendency will continue. Today the proportion of frozen second courses in a range of goods of an average store accounts for more than 60-70%.