Fresh beef brings in £2bn to UK economy

Eleanor Mackay · 06 August, 2014

The fresh beef market in Britain was worth more than £2bn this past year, according to figures from market analyst Kantar Worldpanel.

Kantar released its figures of the beef market for the year ending 20 July 2014, which show a 4.6% increase in expenditure, driven by increased prices, up 7.3% on last year.

The results also break down retailers’ share of the market, with hard discounters Aldi and Lidl seeing the biggest increase in fresh beef market share, up +58.7% and +42.4% respectively. Marks & Spencer has seen the highest fall in share, with a slide of -11.7%, while Tesco and The Co-operative also lost -6.4% and -6.2% of their market share since the previous year, respectively. Asda was the only retailer of the ‘Big Four’ to grow ahead of market spend with an +11% increase on last year.

Retail share of beef (£%) | Create Infographics

Kantar reported that the value of beef for frying/grilling, mince and roasting increased on last year while sales of ‘stewing’ beef decreased -9.8%. Total volume sales of beef were down -2.5% on last year with roasting and stewing beef products seeing the steepest decline, -2.7% and -13.5% respectively.