The UK's leading grocery retailers need to start strategising when it comes to organics, according to the head of the Organic Trade Board (OTB).
Paul Moore was speaking at today (4 March)'s Prosper and Grow With Organic event, which saw presentations from - among others - discounter Netto, the leading organic retailer in Denmark, a country which boasts the highest per capita consumption of organic food in the world.
The latest Organic Food Usage and Attitudes Research survey was also revealed at the event. This showed that 48 per cent of UK households claim to have bought organic food in the last year, with 38 per cent of British households claiming they buy organic produce monthly.
The research also found that 37 per cent of organic consumers will buy the products irrespective of price, and that 90 per cent of those surveyed who don't buy organic products on a regular basis said that they would buy organic fruit if they were going to start buying more organic food items, with 86 per cent giving the same affirmative answer about organic veg.
But, as Catherine Fookes, campaign manager at OTB noted after the survey results were revealed: 'The key message to retailers is expand your range, as if you make organics available to everyone, your sales will change.'
Moore added: 'I would argue there's no strategy around organics at the leading retailers - it's just decided by individual category buyers. They need to do a Netto and make a step-change, as a strategy is the missing piece in the puzzle.
'It's not just a case of 'build it and they'll come', though. Retailers are very big, and they have lots of requests on their time, and we hope suppliers now have the confidence and data needed to try and get retailers to stock their products.'
One of the points emphasised to attendees - mostly organic producers and suppliers - was that organic shoppers have a higher basket spend than non-organic shoppers, and thus, the leading retailers are losing out on business to such consumers, who are taking their trade to the likes of Ocado.
Speaking earlier on at the event, Thor Jørgensen, chief operating officer at Netto International, which hopes to have 15 stores opened in the north of England by the end of this year as part of a venture with Sainsbury's, said retailers having a large organic range is essential to keeping current organic customers in and enticing new ones to the market.
Jørgensen also praised the support organic produce has received from the Danish government for more than two decades, support the UK organic industry widely believes that it is lacking from Westminster.Eight per cent of food and drink sales in Denmark are organic - that's compared to just under 2 per cent in the UK, as revealed by last week's Soil Association Organic Market Report 2015.
Klaus Arntz, chief marketing officer at Wessanen, famous for products such as Clipper tea, also spoke at the event. He illustrated the fact that leading retailers in continental Europe have separate shelves and sections for organic produce in their stores, as opposed to most UK grocery giants, who sell the products among their non-organic counterparts.
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