Organic Market Report 2024: UK organic F&B worth £3.2 billion

Following a 12th year of successive growth for UK organic the Soil Association (SA) has unveiled its annual Organic Market Report (OMR), reporting that the sector has reached a value of £3.2 billion. 

Providing an overview of this year’s OMR Alex Cullen, commercial and marketing director, Soil Association Certification, points to the ‘bounce back’ of independent retailers and supermarkets as a key driver in organic’s 2023 success story.

Over the past year, the report shows, momentum has continued in organic textiles, while foodservice has held its market value. Beauty and wellbeing (down 8%) and home delivery ‘took a hit’ in 2023 due to cost-of-living pressures, but the SA maintains that ‘both show potential for 2024’, with ‘a strong level of confidence’ from businesses in each category. 

Confidence is also climbing among consumers, according to the IGD Shopper Confidence Index which shows an incline of 13 percentage points over the past 12 months. But while shopper spend is up by approximately one third, UK organic farmland isn’t keeping pace with the growth in demand for organic products. 

“Something’s got to give in this equation,” comments Cullen. “The big theme that was touched on by Nielson at our Trade Conference in November was this piece around price. How can we … find a way to break down the price premium that shows up for organic, that is holding us back from scaling the market and transforming our agricultural land?”

The beauty of independents

Although supermarkets represent 62% of the organic sector, Cullen emphasized the importance of indie retail which has enjoyed a ‘strong year’ (up 10%). “The channel is now worth nearly half a billion pounds – £475 million. Two thirds of respondents to our survey are seeing growth and anticipating growth for next year. It really has bounced back.” 

Illustrating the ‘the beauty of independents’ – speed, agility and the ability to ‘connect locally with a customer base’ – Cullen highlights a social media post by Manchester-based cooperative Unicorn Grocery, which benchmarks organic lines against retailers in non-organic to show how competitively priced they are. “They’ve seen a really strong uptick – particularly in a younger [and] returning customer – off the back of this. So this has acted as a real halo, a siren for them to bring in footfall and drive wider sales across their store base.”

Consumer insight 

“What’s interesting is that even in a world where things have been so distracting for everyone, where there’s so much geo-political change and turbulence going on, what we have seen is a real bounce back; sustainability and climate change remain high on the agenda,” Cullen adds. “Nearly two thirds of people believe that Britain should take strong action. This is where the vast majority of people see the future going.”

Soil Association licensees can download a copy of the Organic Market Report 2024 here.

By Rosie Greenaway, Editor

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