natura morta di Tom Welleman al padiglione di Expo 2015, alla Triennale di Milano
Gli americani si stanno, piano piano, allontanando dal cibo spazzatura.
Si tratta di una lunga presa di coscienza con un’evidente evoluzione salutistica, come abbiamo segnalato in:
Stati Uniti, la distribuzione del cibo, e non, 25 anni dopo
Un alimentazione sbagliata porta a malattie: il Fruttosio causa il diabete)
Questa disaffezione dei consumatori americani per il junk food è confermata dai recenti problemi di Coca- Cola e di Mc Donald’s.
Le Monde, in un articolo del 10 aprile 2015 fa il punto sulle difficoltà delle grandi marche alimentari come Kraft, Kellogg’s, ConAgra e Campbell, soprattutto nel segmento dei piatti pronti a lunga conservazione.
Secondo il direttore generale di Campbell Soup, citato dal quotidiano francese:
“esiste una diffidenza crescente del pubblico nel confronto delle grandi marche…”
La « junk food » perd du poids
LeMonde.fr – jeu. 9 avr. 2015.
Le taux d’obésité moyen chez les adultes américains est de 34,9 %, et deux tiers (68,5 %) sont en surpoids ou obèses. L’Américain moyen pèse 11 kilos de plus qu’en 1960 (rapport du Trust for America’s Health, septembre 2014). En dépit de tous les efforts et de toutes les campagnes, il ne baisse pas et la disparité entre les Noirs (47,8 %) les Hispaniques (42,5 %) et les Blancs (32,6 %) persiste.
Guia Besana pour Le Monde.
A tel point que la Food and Drug Administration (FDA), l’Autorité américaine des médicaments, vient d’autoriser la commercialisation d’un implant électrique agissant sur les nerfs contrôlant l’appétit : le Maestro Rechargeable System. Trop de gras, trop de sucre, trop de sel, trop de soda, trop de produits triturés par l’industrie agroalimentaire, on connaît les causes de cette épidémie, née aux Etats-Unis et touchant de plus en plus de pays au même rythme que la diffusion de la « junk food made in USA ».
Il existe pourtant des raisons d’espérer si l’on consulte les bilans des grandes entreprises de la malbouffe, qui connaissent toutes des difficultés. Kellogg’s, le géant des céréales, a vu ses ventes de morning food chuter de 5,7 % et la baisse de ses activités a entraîné une réduction de la main-d’œuvre de 7 % depuis 2013.
Les profits de Kraft Foods, autre major de l’industrie agroalimentaire, ont baissé de 62 %, et ses ventes de 6,6 % dans le secteur des plats et desserts préparés : « 2014 a été une année difficile et décevante », a constaté John T. Cahill, directeur général de la marque. ConAgra, qui contrôle Chef Boyardee, le roi du spaghetti en boîte, a réduit sérieusement ses prévisions pour 2015 et viré son directeur général.
« Il existe une méfiance croissante du public à l’égard des grandes marques de l’agroalimentaire auxquelles il a fait si longtemps confiance », constate, dans Fortune, Denise Morrison, la directrice de Campbell Soup, qui ajoute : « Le dialogue avec le public est de plus en plus compliqué dès qu’il s’agit (…) Lire la suite sur lemonde.fr
The Economist conferma questa tendenza e titola che Le aziende di cibi confezionati dovranno adattarsi ad una popolarità declinante…
Food manufacturing
Slimming down
America’s processed-food makers are having to adapt to declining popularity
May 2nd 2015 | CHICAGO | From the print edition
A febbraio Michelle Obama ha dichiarato di aver tolto dalla tavola presidenziale i macaroni and cheese (pasta e formaggio in scatola..)
“I WILL miss treating my ear infections with the Buffalo Ranch McChicken,” quipped Jon Stewart recently on “The Daily Show”. After sending up McDonald’s announcement that it would phase out its use of chicken that had been fed with antibiotics, the television satirist lampooned a decision by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics to let Kraft put the academy’s “Kids Eat Right” logo on its Singles slices, a “prepared cheese product”. That decision was reversed days later.
After decades of rising sales and high popularity, makers and sellers of processed food are under pressure not just from comedians but from policymakers, campaigners for “real” food and an increasingly sceptical public.
In February Michelle Obama said she had long banned processed food from the presidential family’s table, in particular Kraft’s macaroni and cheese, one of its biggest sellers. Last month the company said it would remove the artificial colouring that gives the product its neon-orange glow.
On April 28th it announced flat sales and a 16% fall in net profits, year on year, in the first quarter.
Kraft ha annunciato vendite a crescita zero e profitti in calo del 16%.
McDonald’s, having replaced its boss in March because of poor sales, said on April 22nd that they were still falling.
Mc Donald’s ha confermato il 22 aprile che le sue vendite stavano ancora calando.
Just as restaurants promising more “natural” ingredients have been winning customers from McDonald’s in recent years, Kraft and other American processed-food makers have lost out to smaller food firms peddling healthier fare.
At the same time, consumers who are less choosy about ingredients have become more picky on price, switching to supermarkets’ own-label foods (see chart).
E i consumatori si stanno approvigionando sempre di più di prodotti a marchio privato.
In questo grafico (The Economist, May 2nd) si vede il declino delle quote di mercato delle grandi marche (Top 25) e la crescita delle marche medie (Middle Tier) e di quelle a marchio privato (Supermarket’s own label).
Some big food firms are cutting back. In January General Mills, maker of Pillsbury chocolate-chip cookies and Totino’s frozen pizza, among other things, announced factory closures and job cuts.
PepsiCo has just finished a three-year process to cut up to 8,700 jobs, or 3% of its global workforce.
General Mills (cereali), Totino’s (pizze surgelate) hanno appena annunciato chiusure di fabbriche e Pepsi ha appena finito di licenziare 8’700 persone.
Americans’ growing interest in healthier, simpler fare is providing opportunities for all sorts of startups. Family farms had been going out of business for decades, but now new ones are being founded, promising organic, locally grown produce. Kind, which makes fruit and nut snacks, has gone from nothing to annual sales of more than $100m in ten years. Even more impressively, Chobani, a maker of Greek-style yogurt, has gone from nowhere to sales of $1.3 billion in the same period.
Prodotti locali, biologici e salutistici continuano a crescere.
Lo dimostrano e la crescita dei Farmer’s Markets (+ 180% dal 2006) e dei Food Hubs (+ 280% dal 2007), mercati dove i contadini entrano direttamente in contatto con i consumatori (fonte : Le Monde supra) e di aziende che producono prodotti salutistici come la frutta secca o lo yogurt greco.
Si può aggiungere che il mercato del biologico USA ha finora avuto una crescita molto forte. V. in proposito anche Dove va il bio ? In Francia, in Italia e nel mondo
One way in which the processed-food giants are reacting is by reformulating their products to answer worries about synthetic ingredients. Just as Kraft is promising with its macaroni, so Nestlé, the world’s biggest food firm, is pledging to remove all artificial flavours and colours in more than 250 types of chocolate sold in America.
E le grandi marche si adattano:
Kraft ha deciso di togliere i coloranti dai macaroni and cheese e Nestlè rimuoverà gli aromi artificiali da 250 tipi di cioccolata venduti in America.
More recently PepsiCo said it would remove aspartame, an artificial sweetener, from Diet Pepsi sold in America. Its arch-rival Coca-Cola is promoting Coke Life, a fizzy drink that contains stevia, a natural, no-calorie sugar substitute.
Sia Pepsi che Coca- Cola stanno attrezzandosi per ridurre zucchero e aspartame dalle loro bevande.
But this strategy is not without risks. Stevia has a slightly bitter aftertaste that may put off some drinkers. And in 2010, when Campbell’s reduced the salt in its soup, customers rebelled, forcing it to add some back. Its soups’ market share in America continued to fall.
Ma ciò non è senza rischi visto che lo Stevia, alternativo allo zucchero, ha un sapore leggermente amaro.
E, nel 2010, quando Campbell ha deciso di togliere del sale dalle sue zuppe i consumatori si sono ribellati:
Campbell ha dovuto fare marcia indietro.
Ma la sua quota di mercato nelle zuppe ha continuato a scendere.
An increasingly popular, albeit expensive, alternative for the food giants has been to buy small but fast-growing healthy-food brands. In 2012 Campbell’s bought Bolthouse Farms, which makes organic juices; a year later it took over Plum Organics, a maker of baby food. In 2013 Coca-Cola bought Innocent, a maker of fruit smoothies. Last year General Mills bought Annie’s, an organic-food firm.
If the decline in processed foods’ popularity continues, two further strategies—consolidation and cost-cutting—will become more prevalent. Since they bought Heinz for $28 billion in 2013, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital, an investment firm with Brazilian roots, have swung the axe at its head office and factories. Last year, although Heinz’s sales fell by nearly 5%, its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose by almost 35%.
In March Mr Buffett and 3G announced that they were buying Kraft for $50 billion to merge it with Heinz. Although the talk in public is about the potential for boosting the sales of both firms’ brands, there will surely be a drive to apply the same “zero-based budgeting” approach to cost-cutting at Kraft that Heinz has undergone. Mondelez, a snacks-maker spun off from Kraft, has also gone for zero-based budgeting: this week it announced improved operating-profit margins, year-on-year, in its first quarter, despite a 10% fall in revenues.
Mr Buffett and 3G are unlikely to be satisfied with just Heinz and Kraft, reckons Robert Moskow, a food-industry analyst at Credit Suisse: “I think they will keep consolidating the industry.” Heinz and 3G say they are planning to cut the debt on their balance-sheet to three times EBITDA in two years. At that point they will be ready to pounce on their next target. Last month Nestlé’s chairman, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, told his shareholders that the two investors have “pulverised the food-industry market, particularly in America, with serial acquisitions,” and that their ruthless cost-cutting is having a “revolutionary impact” on other firms in the industry.
They are not the only ones showing how much scope there is for trimming financial fat as well as the culinary sort from the processed-food business. Two years ago Dean Metropoulos and Andy Jhawar, two entrepreneurs, bought Hostess, the collapsed maker of Twinkies cakes. They got rid of inefficient factories and pumped investment into automated production and an improved distribution system. Now Americans are stuffing their faces with the gooey snacks once more.
Hostility from regulators, campaigners and the media; declining popularity; consolidation and cost-cutting. Processed food sounds like it has much to learn from tobacco, an industry that has been shrinking for more than 50 years. “It won’t be as bad as tobacco, but a bumpy road lies ahead for Big Food,” predicts Alexia Howard of Sanford C. Bernstein, a research firm.
As the cigarette-makers have consolidated and cut costs, they have managed to keep profits up and share prices rising. Processed food may also become a steadily declining but still lucrative business offering guilty pleasures to those who cannot resist.
From the print edition: Business
Ci sono poi dei casi in controtendenza: sia Heinz che Mondelez (cioccolato ex Kraft) hanno perso vendite (- 5% e – 10%, rispettivamente) ma hanno incrementato i profitti e sono quindi molto apprezzate a Wall Street.
Il loro caso assomiglia a quello dell’industria del tabacco che ha visto, negli ultimi anni, scendere i volumi di vendita e incrementare gli utili.
Le prospettive per le grandi marche sembrano essere le seguenti:
1) la diversificazione verso prodotti più salutistici (è il caso di Coca- Cola, ad esempio, con l’acqua in Italia dove ha acquisito la Lilia),
2) la diversificazione della distribuzione (es.: dalla GD ai distributori automatici, è il caso di Twinkies, un marchio molto famoso negli USA) che – dopo un periodo di crisi – si è ripreso
ma soprattutto…
3) il consolidamento e il taglio dei costi come nel caso di Heinz, Mondelez, Pepsi, Coca- Cola, Henkel, Procter, Unilever nel mondo e delle grandi marche operanti in Italia.
Ma qualche segnale positivo, nonostante il declino delle marche e la crisi italiana c’è:
il fatto, ad esempio, che il capo azienda di Unilever, il 27 aprile 2015, sul Corriere della Sera, abbia annunciato che il budget pubblicitario aziendale sia stato incrementato del 10% va in quel senso.
Uno dei cinque stand “esperienziali” di Magnum, marchio di Unilever (uno dei partner di Expo), alla Stazione Centrale di Milano. Con questi stand le grandi marche testano prodotti e strategie.
Quando le grandi marche erano attraenti come delle belle donne…
