Britain’s egg industry is still running 40-50 eggs per capita behind other parts of Europe, despite encouraging levels of growth in consumption in the past year, producers were told during a specialist forum at the Pig & Poultry Fair.
While congratulating the sector on its success in taking UK per capita egg consumption to 189 a year in 2015, an increase of 6 eggs over the past 12 months, Noble Foods’ Tom Willings warned that the British industry remained “leagues behind other countries”.
Stressing that this was a challenge which needed to be addressed, he drew attention to how eggs where being marketed elsewhere in the EU.
“Seeing first hand recently how Germany and Denmark approach egg retailing, I was struck by how much boarder the retail egg offer is in their supermarkets than we have here,” he said.
“In Denmark, for example, 4-5% of eggs are sold as pasteurised whites or yokes or even whole eggs, presented in little plastic cups on supermarket shelves. I’m not saying that’s necessarily the future for us but these countries are getting through a not-insignificant quality of eggs by adopting such sales tactics.
“For me, the further growth in UK egg consumption isn’t just going to come from bigger breakfasts but from participating more in the protein market and from appreciating the role of eggs in that market.
“Supplying specialist sectors, such as sports nutrition products, needs to be looked at. Globally this is a very significant market and we haven’t really begun to explore such opportunities.”
Mr Willings (pictured above) stressed that his address to the Pig & Poultry Fair was given in a personal capacity and not as a representative of Noble Foods.
