The frozen food industry will work to cut energy use and packaging and reverse falling ready-meal sales in the next year, according to the British Frozen Food Federation (BFFF).
New director general Brian Young said the BFFF was working on trials with four major manufacturers and the National Physical Laboratory to safely raise product storage temperatures. "Many cold stores run at temperatures of -25°C to -28°C, but legally temperatures only need to be -18°C. There are opportunities for the whole cold chain here, if we can achieve the end temperature. We will start work with various external bodies. This is a long-term opportunity."
He said reducing packaging waste was obviously a core issue for all food and drink categories after the Courtauld Commitment was launched in 2005.
The drive to reduce waste could benefit frozen food manufacturers in more ways than one, said Young. In contrast to fresh food, which had to be disposed of if not consumed soon enough, frozen food could be kept for much longer. "It's an opportunity for growth. When people become conscious of how wasteful many products are, they might begin to use frozen food more frequently than they have done in the past."
Young also said packaging formats for frozen ready meals needed to be looked at. More use of transparent sleeves would help reverse shrinking sales by showcasing contents to shoppers. Other frozen food sectors using this tactic, such as fruit, were achieving strong sales growth, he said. "The trend will be to show more of the product or use good-quality photography."
Young said he was confident the negative trend in frozen ready meals could be addressed. "If you could get the products right, there's no reason why they couldn't bounce back, but we need retailers to stop selling them on deal."
He said TNS Worldpanel figures for the year to June 17 showed frozen ready meals down 5% in value to £620M. However, the frozen food market as a whole was 2.8% up in the same period.