Research

New New Things at the 2021 PLMA Salute to Excellence Awards

5 July 2021 10:00 RaboResearch

This year’s judging of the PLMA’s Salute to Excellence Awards was the most interesting ever. Don’t get us wrong, any contest is by definition interesting. We are...

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What Difference Did Covid Make on the Shelves?

Well, we got what we had hoped for. There are enough differences pre- and post-corona to take

note of:

    Indulge yourself like there is no tomorrow. The one and only priority of many desserts, ice creams, snacks and sweets is to indulge the consumer. Food retailers seem to have gone completely off the scale in Nutri-Score terms. There has been no holding back on sugar, calories, fats, alcohol or other ingredients that were deemed less healthy before Covid.
    Free from ‘free from’. We saw surprisingly few clean label or ‘free from’ products. Yes, some retailers sent in a few products, but we had expected more. Perhaps organic is a renewed point of focus and the ‘free from’ trend from the late tens may not have survived the pandemic.
    Talking about organic… It may never have been away completely, but retailers wanted the judges to look at their new organic product ranges. Still, occasionally, very much at apremium price, but the quality was mostly a bit better than ‘normal’ food.
    Plant-based is here to stay. Again, no shortage of private-label plant-based products comingto the market this year. Notably cheese alternatives climbed the ranks. The good news is that the tastiness of products is improving every year. With some notable exceptions, unfortunately. Watch out there, don’t ruin the repeat purchase!
    As local as local can get. Also before corona, food retailers gladly entered many regional or PDO (protected designation of origin) products. Whether it was the pandemic or the EverGiven, this year even more local ingredients hit the shelves. With French-origin infusion tea at three times the price of earl grey tea, as the most notable example.
    We have seen this one before. Retailers increasingly focus on scope 3 emissions, and plastics seem to be part of the quick(-ish) win here. Something that retailers can learn from the nonfood shelves is how to improve the messaging around the lowering of emissions by using either less plastic or recycled plastics.
    Really, is that still a thing? Occasionally something appeared on a plate that gave us flashbacks to the 1980s. We’ve mentioned the retro trend before, but this should be seen ina modern context, i.e. new products with retro flavours. But a frozen, microwavable, TV dinner as a novel idea? Please think again.

You will understand that we are already looking forward to the 2022 PLMA Salute to Excellence Awards to see which of these ‘trends’ were short-lived, and which ones will stick. As for the winners, we do have our clear favourites among the 600 different products that we tested. But we are not going to spoil the party. We will leave any announcements to the organisers themselves. The PLMA is in the process of deciphering, dissecting and sorting all of the feedback from the 10 judges and is set to announce the winners of the Awards after July/August. All winners will be on display at the PLMA World of Private Label International Tradeshow in December.

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