04.05.2017

Cooking Pot Growth Fails to Electrify the SKA Market

Total Small Kitchen Appliances (SKA) saw a drop in value of over 9% in the first 3 months of 2017 with the majority of categories declining including kettles, toasters and food preparation.

After a sharp rise in value to almost £100m in 2015, liquidisers have continued a downward slide which emerged towards the end of last year as saturation creates more of a replacement market. Liquidisers with a take away cup account for the biggest proportion of sales and has fallen from £25m in Q1 2016 to less than £17m in Q1 2017. The wider food preparation sector reflected this decline with kitchen machines and food processors also falling by 37% and 8% respectively.

Electrical cooking pots were the best performer within SKA growing by 16% in value. This market is split between slow cookers and multi cookers, with slow cookers the larger segment accounting for £6.4m of value. It is the smaller segment of multi cookers which show the highest growth rising 100% year on year. These products are designed to take some of the hassle out of cooking for the consumer through functions such as automatic temperature controls and timer settings, with slow cookers offering the opportunity for one pot meals. This provides consumers with a versatile way to cook healthy meals in more time efficient ways.

Contributing to the increased value of the multi cooker market was a rising average selling price from £65 in Q1 2016 to £67 in Q1 2017 showing consumers are willing to spend extra money on kitchen gadgets if it gives them more free time. The added bonus of multi-functionality mean they take up less kitchen space too.

The current economic uncertainty has led to a fall in consumer confidence, and this could have an impact on premium markets and consumer attitudes to buying more premium products in the future. There has been little innovation to drive sales over recent months, so if premium brands are to grow in the future, they will have to provide consumers with products that provide more bang for their buck.

All data relates to the January - March 2017 unless otherwise stated.