Trade: Report: FMCG sales in Romania up 17.3% in Q2 2023

Sales of consumer goods (FMCG) in Romania increased in the second quarter of this year by 17.3% in value terms compared to the same period last year, according to NielsenIQ Retail Audit data. At the same time, the second quarter of the year was also marked by a slowdown in the decline in volumes that has characterized the last quarters (-2% in Q2 2023, compared to -4.6% in Q1 2023), as well as a slowdown in price growth (+19.3% in Q2 2023, compared to +23.1% in Q1 2023). According to a press release, at European level the consumer goods market evolved similarly to that of Romania over the last twelve months. With an average European value growth of +9.2%, volumes decreased by -2.3% and prices increased by +11.5%.As compared to the countries in Eastern Europe, Romania is fifth in terms of value growth (+18.3%)over the last twelve months, being surpassed by Hungary, with a growth of +22.%, Kazakstan (+22.7%), Serbia (+19.5%) and Bulgaria (+19.3%).In the second quarter of this year, however, Romania, with an increase of +17.3%, was outperformed by only 3 countries: Ukraine (+43.7%), Hungary (+18.4%) and Croatia (+17.6%). None of the countries in the area recorded increases in consumption, and Romania was among the countries with the smallest losses in volume (-2.7%), compared to Latvia with a decrease of -11.2%, Hungary (-7.1%), or Slovakia (-5.2%) for example. All product macro-categories recorded significant value advances in the first half of the year. The largest increase was in the food category (+19.7%), which accounted for more than half of the total shopping basket in the Romanian consumer goods market, followed by the non-alcoholic beverages category, which recorded a value increase of 17.5%. Non-food products increased in value by 16.6% and alcoholic beverages by only 12.3%, due to the migration of part of consumption to HoReCa. More than three quarters of product categories grew in value in the first half of the year, while only 32% of them managed to grow in volume. The top categories that increased by more than 10% in value were beer, fizzy drinks, fresh meat, water, cheese, coffee, snacks, chocolate, sweet biscuits, dairy products, vegetables, bread, household products and spirits, but none of these increased in volume, with the exception of fresh meat (+6.8% in volume), while the remaining categories stagnated or lost volume.   The report also notes that the shift towards a more pragmatic and calculated attitude to purchasing has been reflected in the growth dynamics of the retail channels. Thus, the channel with the highest growth in the first half of 2023 was Discounters (+26.3% in value), followed by smaller formats - Mini-markets (+22.7%) and Supermarkets (16.5%).   Traditional Retail grew by 15.3% in value, while Hypermarkets recorded the slowest growth of 13%.   The novelty of Q2 of the year is the change of the consumption patterns in Hyper and Supermarkets: although the value of the average shopping basket in Hypers stayed relatively constant despite inflation (-0.6% against Q2 2022), the number of transactions increased by almost 10%. In Supers, the value of the average shopping basket increased by 9% against the same period of last year, and the number of transactions increased, in its turn, by 5.8%. This consumption pattern shows the tendency of the consumers to pay more frequent visits to the shops, in the attempt to keep under control the value of the shopping basket.Another way Romanian consumers have coped with inflation is by turning to retailers' own brands. The upward trend of private labels continued in Q2, when their market share gained another 0.7 points compared to last year, with this segment now accounting for 19.3% of the total Romanian consumer market. Private label products in the non-food category showed the most impressive growth this quarter, up 2.7 points. Although own brands continued to increase in importance in Romania, we are still under the European average where they represent 32.7% of the total of sales but above the average of Eastern Europe – only 16.2%, says the quoted source.The online FMCG trade tracked by NIQ recorded a significant value growth in the second quarter of the year, namely 20.4%. The largest share of monitored online trade was taken by non-food products, up 25.5%, and food products, up +14.1% in value. Alcoholic beverages increased in e-commerce by 25.2%, while non-alcoholic beverages saw an increase of 21.3%. Although the e-commerce market had not seen significant fluctuations since the end of the pandemic, the peak in value growth of this market was reached in Q2 2023. In Romania as well promotions started to grow again in Q2 2023 getting to represent 24% of the total of sales (+3.9 %). All channels of modern commerce put on the market more offers in 2023 than for the whole previous year, but, even so, the efficiency of the promotions dropped for all macro-categories of products, with the exception of alcoholic beverages, whose promotions had an efficiency of 77.1% in Q2 2023 (against 76.6% in Q2 2022).   NIQ is a world leader in the domain of information about consumers, offering the most complex understanding of purchasing behavior and showing new growing ways for traders and producers. In 2023, NIQ merged with GfK, bringing together the two leaders in the industry with unprecedented global coverage.NIQ is a company from the Advent International portfolio with operations in over 100 markets, covering more than 90% of the world population.