IEG Vu Global Outlook 2020: Juice market in overall decline
Pure fruit juice consumption is falling in the major markets. Growth elsewhere has not compensated for this.
This is an industry under pressure. The problems facing it are
many and varied. They include climate change, whose effects upon
production of raw material (the fruits and, increasingly, the
vegetables) have been profound. The issue is not so much actual
warming, though this is happening, but wild fluctuations in the
weather. We are seeing hotter and longer heatwaves and longer and
heavier periods of rainfall. This makes it harder and more
expensive to plan production, especially in tropical zones where
the variations are more pronounced.
Then there is the problem of consumption. Fruit juices are getting
a bad press right now, although work by the AIJN and IFU is gamely
fighting this. The many sugar taxes, actual and proposed, are
focusing on sugar-sweetened soft drinks, which include nectars, and
juices are largely excluded, but juices contain sugar and are being
demonised just the same. Consumption in the major world markets is
falling. See the charts on this page. EU consumption of pure juice
fell by 4% between 2014 and 2018 (the most recent data available)
and is continuing to decline. The decline in nectars has been
steeper. In the US, retail sales of orange juice, once a breakfast
staple, have been declining for nearly a decade (though now look
like bottoming out). Tariffs are hampering global trade, especially
between China and the US and the US and Europe. True, consumption
is increasing in regions like Africa and Asia-Pacific, but
consumption there is about one-tenth that of the combined EU and
US, and it will take many years to reach the levels of these two
giant consuming regions.
For all this, there are bright spots. Consumers are trading up: buying better, costlier products. China seems to have leaped (in the major cities, anyway) from juice drinks to cold-pressed NFC juices without bothering with reconstituted juice or even 'ordinary' NFC in the interim.
Cold-pressed juices are gaining traction everywhere, in fact. Consumers still hanker after new, exotic flavours and so the future looks quite bright for tropicals.
Explore more: Global Juice Outlook
Quick ten page read to keep you on top of the juice market. We examine the outlook of the "big three" juices along with the prospects for minor juices.
This article was published by S&P Global Commodity Insights and not by S&P Global Ratings, which is a separately managed division of S&P Global.