Competition in the chilled pizza market is hotting up, with prepacked products battling it out with the fresh made-to-order alternative from the deli counter. And increasingly, manufacturers are able to combine a 'craft' image with shelf-life of up to a month.
Italians may still claim to make the best pizzas in Europe, but when it comes to prepacked items, the UK leads the field in its taste for chilled product. Packaging supplier Sealed Air Cryovac quotes figures from Euromonitor suggesting that last year some 70% of European prepackaged pizza was frozen. But in the UK, the figure was lower at 62%.
What is more, the 38% that was chilled represented around half of the sales value. While overall volumes for frozen pizza may still be growing throughout Europe, value per kilo is either flat or in some cases falling, says the company. "Rightly or wrongly, the consumer perception is increasingly that the quality is in the chilled sector," says Francesco Arena, marketing manager for Europe Middle East and Africa for ready meals and foodservice.
Sealed Air Cryovac, which claims to have a wider offering in pizza packaging than any other supplier, points to two improvements in shelf-life and convenience in the chilled sector.
The first of these is an extension of Cryovac BDF film technology, which can be combined with modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) for shelf-life of 12 days or more (always dependent on specific toppings). By using the same combination on the Ilapak VacMap horizontal machine, this can be extended to four weeks. This is roughly the same as the shelf-life achievable with sealed thermoformed trays, but with far more 'fresh' visual appeal, Arena argues.
Secondly, the company's Pizzafresh system, which twins a rigid base with what is effectively a film tray-lidding operation, is now undergoing retail trials in Europe with an oven-friendly base. "The tray can now be made of ovenable crystalline polyethylene terephthalate (CPET), and is designed to allow air circulation to keep the base from getting soggy," says Arena. Here, shelf-life is again around four weeks.