• Analysis and Studies
• Frozen Vegetables

Introduction about the product

Frozen vegetables are prepared by freezing fresh vegetables with the appropriate maturity for processing. These goods are divided into subcategories, and traded separately. For example, in the Harmonized System frozen olives, frozen spinach, frozen mushrooms, can be found with different codes and thereby traded separately. Normally these products are traded without any ingredient added.

EU Market for frozen vegetables

Europe is the biggest player in the frozen vegetables global trade. In fact, EU countries appear as the first importers of these products, accounting for around half of global imports. What data show is that a large part of these imports are part of intra-EU trade.

Intra-European imports of frozen vegetables have increased annually by an average of 3% in volume in the period of 2014-2018. In 2018 the total amount touched a value of €3.3 billion and a quantity of 3.4 million tonnes. Instead, imports of frozen vegetables from developing countries and the rest of the world remained low and saw no growth.

Among European countries, the main importers of frozen vegetables are Germany and France, respectively with €582 million and €567 million in total in 2018. Right after come Belgium, Spain, UK, Italy and the Netherlands.

Main trends and future growth opportunities

There are two main trends involving the industry that are expected to increase demand for these products: the growing need for ‘ready to eat’ or ‘easy to prepare’ food, and for vegan and vegetarian meal solutions.

These tendencies will allow a steady and stable growth: in the next five years, the EU market will possibly increase with an annual growth rate of 2-4%. In addition, prices are expected to remain stable in the medium to long term; to such extent, the European Union financially supports local farmers with various subsidies.

Finally, data show that the European market has the highest number of innovations in the frozen fruit and vegetables industry, with 44% of total world’s patents in this sector. This is an encouraging proof of the possibilities of the EU market to further develop in this sector.

Source: https://www.cbi.eu/market-information/