Britain’s 10 bestselling cooking sauce brands have gone off the boil, losing £4.9m (0.9%) in combined value on volumes down 0.3%. That’s to 1.2 million fewer jars, pouches and packets sold. 

The biggest casualty is Premier Foods’ Loyd Grossman brand, which has seen £4.3m (8.2%) wiped out, despite selling for an average of 8p a unit less than the market average. The next biggest loss came from Premier stablemate Homepride, down £2m (7.9%). 

Price is an important factor: both Grossman and Homepride are at the lower end of the branded price spectrum, and the brands have fallen victim to shoppers switching to own label, up £2.4m (0.7%) on volumes up 3.1%. 

But that’s not all. Consumers are getting more adventurous, helping to drive the £5.2m (5.3%) growth in Old El Paso and £2.1m (3.4%) gain for Patak’s. The brands have seen volumes rise by 3.6% and 6.4% respectively. 

The rise in pastes is another factor, says Paul Watmore, marketing director at Patak’s brand owner AB World Foods. “There has been a slight decline in Indian cooking sauces driven by the move into pastes, spice mixes and meal kits.”

“With Patak’s having a market-leading proposition in pastes (79% market share) and consumers increasingly buying into the Patak’s meal kit offerings, it’s important that Patak’s continues to support these sub-sectors as well as sauce,” he adds.

Changing consumer tastes as well as falling purchase frequency and prices has led to the cooking sauce sector’s 1.5% decline to £755.5m on volumes down 0.7%. 

“Italian is leading the decline, falling by 3.9%,” says Kantar analyst Josh Montague-Fuller. “Other cuisines, except Tex-Mex, are flat or in moderate growth while other international sauces (Latin American, Spanish, Middle Eastern and so on) are driving growth.” 

Brands have borne the brunt of the decline. “Shoppers are trading down to own label,” says Montague-Fuller. “The discounters, led by Aldi, are driving own-label growth.” 

Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons have respectively suffered 1%, 2%, 4% and 3% losses in their own-label cooking sauce sales, though the decline in branded sales is greater for all of the big four apart from Sainsbury’s. 

Brands need to focus more on exotic cuisines, suggests Montague-Fuller: “Classic cuisines like Italian will become commoditised. But other sectors will continue their growth, boosted by the rise of scratch cooking and the search for healthier meals.”