Frozen food must innovate to flourish

By Nicholas Robinson

- Last updated on GMT

The British Frozen Food Federation conference took place in Warwickshire on February 20.
The British Frozen Food Federation conference took place in Warwickshire on February 20.

Related tags Frozen food Business Frozen food federation

British frozen food manufacturers must reveal the benefits of frozen food to the consumer to revitalise the sector and increase confidence.

In this exclusive podcast, Brian Young, director general of the British Frozen Food Federation (BFFF), told FoodManufacture.co.uk that frozen food sales had recovered following the horsemeat scandal last year, but consumer confidence had not.

What they were missing

Young was speaking at the BFFF conference earlier this month (February 20) and said the sector had to work with retailers to innovate and show consumers what they were missing.

“Many consumers have been eating frozen products for a very long time, perfectly happily, so there is much appreciation of the good food that frozen offers, but sometimes it’s not seen,”​ he said.

Consumers had changed their shopping habits and become savvier, which frozen food manufacturers could play on, said Young. They were also interested in saving money and reducing waste and frozen food offered a good way of doing this, he added.

Read the March issue of Food Manufacture ​to see more stories from the BFFF conference.

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1 comment

About frozen foods

Posted by María Dolores Alvarez Torres,

review of the literature indicates the need for research in a number of areas: the particular important one being the selection and breeding of high-yield cultivars possessing appropriate quality attributes for freezing and for mechanical harvesting and processing; also, the selection of cultivars with negligible enzyme activity and hence requiring little or no blanching being an important area for future research. Modifications to processes should be the outcome of basic research into the physical, chemical, and biological features of phytosystems at low temperatures aimed at improving our understanding of the behavioural processes that take place during freezing. Another important task is to develop objective methods for measuring product properties, in particular their mechanical and thermophysical properties, and to apply these to process optimization and the design of control and processing equipment. New TTT/PPP studies are needed to classify new products according to their stability during storage at different temperatures; such studies should also consider the influence of temperatures under actual freezing chain conditions, taking into account the effect of temperature fluctuations on quality. The development of new generations of frozen vegetable products with higher added values and competitive pricing will depend on creative efforts and technological development arising out of cooperation between scientists and manufacturers. Proper information about and promotion of the safety, the nutritional and sensory quality and the availability of new vegetable frozen products, combined with the development of Internet shopping and home delivery services at controlled temperature, will help the frozen vegetable industry to compete better with other food sectors and to satisfy ever-growing consumer expectations regarding quality and health benefits.

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