The german organic market
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Organic Market in Central-Europe
In Europe Germany represents the biggest organic
market followed by France and Great Britain. And
there is almost a potential to grow
Denmark organic food 6,5 %
Germany
3,4 %
France, Great Britain 2,2 % of the total food sales
In comparison to Great Britain and France it is
a general fact that the turnower of food products
In Germany is remarkable but one has to khow
That Germany - in general concerning food - is a
low-price-market. That is the same concerning
organic food.
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Organic Market
In comparison to France you see that the german organic market is
more concentrated than others. The german market concentrates on fruit and
vegetables, on traditional well-food from rice cake to vegetarian spread and on dairy
products.
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Organic Market
Also iIn comparison to Italy you see that the german organic market is
more concentrated than others. The market concentrates on fruit and vegetables, on
traditional well-food from rice cake to vegetarian spread and on dairy products.
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German Organic Market
The first organic sales in the end of the last century in Germany were dominated by
small specialist shops ( more than 40 %of the sales ). That has changed up to now.
The organic food sales are
23 % in specialist shops ( about 2 000 existing shops )
35 % in supermarkets of any surface of the normal food-chains ( a selection of the
existing 40 000 food shops in Germany)
19 % in discount-markets ( more than 10 000 shops holding more than 40 %
of the total food-sales in Germany)
The structure of the specialist shops is not very much developed - there are only two
bigger chains Alnatura and Denn´s the others are distictively smaller
The organic sales-power of the food chains depends depends on the development of
organic sales by the chains. The leading organic seller is tegut... With only 300
shops but nearly 20 % of the annual tunover in organic food.
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German Organic Market
There is a tendency that organic food sells better in smaller supermarkets and a lot of
the smaller supermarkets in Germany are manager-owned supermarkets within in
food-chains of Edeka and Rewe. The two leading food-chaines have a struture by
region with a centralized head-office. The way they are making up decisions may
change from time to time.
At the moment a few of the mainly southern Edeka regions do buy organic food
directly from whole-salers or producers. The rewe-management has a more national
tendency at the moment.
The two leading food-chains Rewe and Edeka have a high percentage of managerowned supermarkets because they are developing better than others since years.
The organic strategy of the food-chains varies following the sales situation. Only
chains like tegut do work on this field very constantly.
The manager-owned shops often select products themselves but that means that
they will have to be delivered directy and in small quantities to the shop.
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German Organic Market
Fruit and vegetables and dairy products do have specific logistic structures.
In general the food chains have an own logistic network for the basic supply with the
faster turning products the rest is organised in partnership with selected wholesalers providing the logistic for more specialised articles.
The smaller supermarkets normally sell about 12 000 various products ( organic 400 1200 ) the bigger food-markets have a selection of 20 000 to 30 000 products
( organic up.to 3000 )
The normal structure of stock within supermarket-chains has a maximum capacity of
about 14 000 products in their stock, that means that a lot products will have to be
delivered direcly to the shops.
More than 60 % of the organic products have to be delivered by wholesalers.
the most wellknown organic brands in germany started as a combination of
organic brand and wholesaler-organisation like Biozentrale with „gut & gerne“
Rila with Rinatura or Rapunzel/Biogourmet
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Organic Market - consumer insight
The typical german heavy user of organic food has more than 50 years
younger consumers often say that organic products cost too much and are not
trendy enough. Moreover this is a typical question of generation - the 55 +
people have been the forerunners of the ecological movement in Germany.
Organic products are slowly speading to the 30 + generation of today.
A strong motivation in general to choose food is to buy local food.
The major motivation for organic food is to avoid any sort of contermination
and to avoid allergic reactions. Added values in this direction are very much
appreciated even if the consumer does not necessarily need features like
gluten-free.
German consumers don´t have a knowlegde on food like the
French - they have no elaborated sense of taste - their judgement depends on a
lot on trends and the general desire to do something to achieve a longer life. A lot of
typical organic values are also to be found with conventional food today.
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Organic Market - the year of crisis
The german organic market did remain in full stability - there was little growth but no
irritating decrease. There was a general decrease of the consumption of dairy
products which has been also effecting on organic dairy products.
There was a high pressure on the prices of vegetables which was also effecting on
organic vegetables and there was consumer reaction on the to high price of Bionadelemonade, effecting a decrease of their sales up to 25 %.
There was an increase of organic sales within the basic products like preserves,
coffee or wine and no general tendency to buy less organic products.
Details tell that the organic sales in smaller supermarkets grew 9,4 % while the
General growth was 1 % and only discount market had 9,8 % less organic sales.
There were also special effects like the fact that Edeka did not work on the Edeka
organic shop-brand „Bio-Wertkost“ for one year or the fact that they didn´t focus very
much during the period overtaking the „PLUS“ discount-markets to NETTO on the
discount shop-brand „BIOBIO“ working very well in past.
By these special effects the organic shop-brands didn´t grow in 2008 but
the producer brands did.
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