Data by the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHBD) reveals sales for all dairy products increased in 2021 but came nowhere near to the soaring 2020 levels when the UK left the EU.
Britain officially left the EU at 11pm on January 31st, 2020.
Ongoing negotiations on the deal do not seem to have affected dairy sales as milk, cheese, butter, cream, and yoghurt sales all increased compared with 2019 figures.
In 2021, cheese lovers sent sales flying by 13.2 percent compared with 2019, with specialty and continental leading the way up 27 percent.
But, cheddar was by far the most popular, accounting for 49 percent, up eleven percent on 2019.
Cream sales also soared 21.3 percent in 2020, falling just 0.5 percent to 2021.
Consumers buying butter increased 16.5 percent in 2020 but were slightly down in 2021 decreasing 1.8 percent.
The AHBD has put a lot of the increase down to the Coronavirus pandemic and lockdown restrictions easing.
Senior Retail Insight Manager Kim Heath is predicting figures to continue to soar in 2022.
Ms Heath said: “As a staple product, dairy will continue to do well in 2022, despite growth slowing last year as restrictions were eased.
“We can see that people in the UK continue to enjoy dairy, with 77 percent of consumers saying dairy is a vital part of their everyday food and 99.5 percent of households shopped for dairy products every month in 2021.”
Yoghurt was one of the only products to experience a low increase, rising only 4.3 percent on 2019 and falling 1.6 percent in 2021.
Unsurprisingly milk sales did increase 5.8 percent in 2020 with four-pint bottles accounting for a huge 46 percent of growth.
Ms Heath said the figures are “incredibly encouraging” compared with 2019 figures with every product experiencing growth.
She said: “Dairy as a whole remains significantly up on 2019, rising 11.3 percent in value and 6.3 percent in volume.”
Looking ahead to 2022, analyst Katherine Jack said: “As a staple product, dairy will continue to do well into 2022. However, as 2020 was such an extraordinary year for grocery, growth throughout 2021 slowed overall and started to decline against 2020. However, this is not a gloomy position given the dairy category will remain elevated versus 2019 in retail.
“As a result of these anticipated trends, we expect all major dairy categories to see growth in retail volumes compared to 2019.”
YouGov data from last year revealed that 77 percent of consumers say diary is a vital part of everyday food with 99.5 percent of households shopping the category every month in 2021.
Source: express.co.uk
