Fortified/Functional Packaged Food in Poland

PROSPECTS

Health awareness stimulates sales

Polish citizens across all age groups have been steadily improving their adoption of balanced diets, including the consumption of minerals and vitamins. Adults who actively engage in sports are focusing on products such as cereal bars, fromage frais and quark or drinking yoghurts, which contain extra protein or healthy calories for additional activities, all of which are presented in small pack sizes.

New launches to maintain consumer interest

Manufacturers will attempt to meet customer demand by providing them with a constant stream of new products with new added properties, such as a wider spectrum of vitamins added, new substances and overall new formulas with higher protein content or substances addressing particular health-related issues. Moreover, new flavours and packaging will also be launched in order to maintain consumer loyalty to brands, while packaging will remain the main method of conducting information regarding the FF features of a product.

Tough future for FF packaged food

Despite the good performance of FF packaged food in Poland over the review period, the category will become increasingly saturated and face growing competition from more specialised HW categories, which will cause a gradual shift in demand from FF packaged food towards free from lactose, organic or naturally healthy products. Moreover, FF packaged food has become widely available on retailers’ shelves, thus creating a situation where products such as yoghurt, breakfast cereals or vegetable oils will be purchased by consumers used to the added value, while consumers seeking such properties may prefer other, healthier or better developed products instead.

COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE

Strong presence of international players

Among the leading companies in FF packaged food in 2018, only Bakoma and Maspex Wadowice Grupa were domestic. International manufacturers have been able to successfully compete because of their well-developed infrastructure, technology and experience in the category gained from other markets, as well as larger funds for research and development.

Thriving private label

Private label in fortified/functional packaged food has been performing well, having the third largest share of value sales in Poland in 2018. Such success was attributed to the wide definition of FF products, which also included products with minor enhancements, enabling private label to present its products as HW despite being of inferior quality to branded alternatives, while also retailing at much lower prices.

Extensive focus on marketing

Manufacturers have put extra stress on cooperating with sportspeople, celebrities and actors to promote their FF products as superior to the competition, due to the limited options available in terms of content modification and improvements in formula. This was especially prevalent in FF cereal bars in the case of Lion (bar version of popular cereal by Nestlé), Bakalland’s BA! brand, which was supported by a short TV spot showing several flavoured variants of the product and stressing its healthy properties.

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