Anuga Cologne: about Bread and Bakery, Hot Beverages

Cologne / DE. (km) The bread basket is just as international as the variety of hot drinks. This will also be demonstrated at the coming Anuga Bread + Bakery, Hot Beverages. The trade fair unites over 400 exhibitors from the bread, bakery, sandwich spreads and hot drinks segments on exhibition space measuring 20’500 square metres. Companies such as Darboven, Ditsch, Dilmah, Gimoka, Gujarat, Instanta, Lambertz, Langnese, Lavazza, Harry Brot, Kronenbrot, Kuchenmeister, Namyang, Mestemacher, Mokate, Sri Lanka Tea Board, Super Group, Tea Board of India, Vandemortele, Witor’s and Wolf Butterback and many others stand for the wide range of exhibits. Buyers from the trade and food service sector will find numerous ideas here for their business. Around 6’800 exhibitors from approximately 100 countries are expected to participate at Anuga from 10. to 14. Oktober 2015 in Cologne.

In the meantime, French fine bakery products such as croissants or Italian Ciabatta bread are as commonplace on the breakfast table as rolls, which are often referred to as Semmel or Schrippen in Germany. The next bakery is still just a few steps away for many German consumers. Particularly in big cities and urban areas, the consumers can frequently chose between one or more bakeries that are within walking distance. The situation is similar in France, Austria or Switzerland. Numerous surveys from the past years have already forecasted that this range of variety will decrease in the future. With regards to Germany this means that even taking an optimistic view the number of small bakery businesses will soon drop down to around 12’000.

The food retail trade will of course profit as a result, because it will further expand its offer of bread and bakery products. The trade has been able to win over market shares through the introduction of baking stations and baking machines or self-run bakeries in the foyer areas of supermarkets. Here, primarily the discounters reacted quickly to the new situation.

The industrial bakeries such as Harry-Brot are also profiting from the bread and bakery products trend in the supermarket. The company is considered to be number one on the German bakery products market. The core sales market of the industrial bakery from Schenefeld is North Germany. In the past five years, Harry-Brot has increased its turnover by 40 percent. The company is still banking on increasing revenues.

Harry-Brot produces at nine locations in North and North East Germany as well as in West Germany and employs in total a headcount of around 4’000 employees. The company has 45 sales outlets and delivers more than 9’300 shops, 6’600 of whom with prebake products. The company from Schenefeld operates market bakeries in over 4’000 food markets.

Due to this development, the bakery trade will perhaps only account for around half of the overall market by the year 2020. However, the supply company Wolf Butterback for example wants to stop this trend. With a first-class niche concept, the subsidiary of the Oetker Group offers frozen premium bakery products to traditional bakeries throughout Europe. Currently, 250 million pieces of dough leave the two factories at the Fürth location every year. A quarter of the official non-stated turnover is generated by exports. With an upward trend.

The new variety seems to be doing the overall market good: According to a forecast by the Institute for Commercial Research in Cologne, the market volume for bread and bakery products in Germany is expected to rise up to Euros 19.7 billion by the year 2020.

Baking stations – particularly those of the discounters – will continue to shape the structural change of the industry. The expansion of the range of products of the machines to include fine bakery products should boost the growth further from 2016 onwards.

The situation is however totally different in the case of seasonal goods. According to own accounts, the Aachener Lambertz Group makes almost half of its turnover with seasonal items such as gingerbread and printen (spiced cookies). In a stagnating market for bakery goods, the company nevertheless recently managed to increase its annual turnover by four percent up to Euros 585 million thanks to a good turnover for gingerbread products. For the current fiscal year, the Aachen-based company hopes to still be able to make a small plus in spite of the stagnating market.

Regarding the all-year-round business, Lambertz is targeting young consumers with new offers such as boxes imprinted with motifs, marshmallows and innovative designs. «We try to go with the new developments and trends», said the sole proprietor Hermann Bühlbecker. In extending the range of products he sees development potential in the manufacturer of Dresden Stollen (fruit loaf), Dr. Quendt. The Lambertz Group entered a participation with the company in June 2014. Accounting for around 22 percent of the turnover, the export share of the manufacturer of bakery products is comparably small. The reason for this is the company’s special seasonal range of products with numerous, partly regional specialities. North America is the most important market outside of Europe. In the USA, Lambertz is particularly enjoying growth thanks to big customers such as Walmart and the Aldi North subsidiary, Trader Joe’s. The Anuga Bread + Bakery, Hot Beverages, which Lambertz has been present at for many years, offers an important platform for new foreign contacts.

Unique business opportunities arise at the Anuga Bread + Bakery, Hot Beverages from the synergies between the different business areas bread and bakery products, as well as tea, coffee and cocoa. In terms of hot drinks and the often-volatile out-of-home market, the trend is returning to traditional coffee. With special beans and highly varied roast expressions, the offer to consumers is widening.

For example, the Italian traditional roasting company Caffé New York is offering the food service sector and trade an amazing variety of blends from Java, Cuba, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Columbia, Cameroon, India, Guatemala or Nicaragua. But also industry giants such as Lavazza or the Dutch coffee and vending machine specialist Koffie are using the international stage that the Anuga Bread + Bakery, Hot Beverages is offering again this year.

Tea in all its varieties – from classic black and green tea, to fruit, herb and aromatised teas – is also an important theme at Anuga Bread + Bakery, Hot Beverages. Whereas countries like Germany or the Netherlands tend to belong more to the coffee drinking nations, tea is the preferred drink in Asia and South Eastern Asia as well as in numerous countries of the Near and Middle East and Africa. In Europe, especially the Irish are well-known for their love of tea. The worldwide tea market is estimated to be around Dollars 90 billion. Tea is the most consumed drink in the world after water. China and India head the list of the biggest producer countries, followed by Kenya, Sri Lanka and Türkiye.

Anuga is exclusively open to trade visitors from the retail and food service trades from Saturday, 10 October 2015 until Wednesday, 14 October 2015, from 10:00 to 18:00 on all days (Image: Anuga Cologne).