Research and Markets has added the Ethnic Foods Market Report Plus 2014 report to its offering.

It examines the market for ethnic foods (including rice) in the UK. In 2013, the market grew by 3.2% from 2012, representing the fourth consecutive year of growth in the five-year review period analysed in this report.

This growth was spread across both the ethnic foods sector and the rice sector. The latter accounts for approximately 20% of the overall market, but growth in 2013 was primarily attributable to inflated retail prices, which disguised faltering volume sales. The ethnic foods sector, on the other hand, accounts for approximately 80% of the overall market and consists of mature subsectors, such as Indian and Chinese foods, as well as medium-sized and emerging subsectors, including Mexican/Tex-Mex food and Caribbean food, respectively. In general, the smaller subsectors performed strongly in 2013; the market continues to diversify as an adventurous consumer base continues to experiment with new global cuisines. As such, the other ethnic foods category, which includes niche ethnic foods such as Japanese food, African food and Indonesian food, expanded at the most substantial rate in 2013.

This process of market diversification can partly be explained by the issue of authenticity, which is a key driver in this market. There is a complex relationship between the foodservice sector and the retail sector; the dishes served by restaurants and home delivery outlets contribute to the perception of authenticity in this market. Consumers want to recreate the dishes that they know at home and this limits the potential for certain new product developments (NPDs), especially in mature categories such as Indian food. Nevertheless, the demand for convenient and increasingly spicy mealtime solutions has allowed established sectors to continue to grow. Increasing variety within the marketplace is fuelling growth rather than dispersing sales, bolstering the robust nature of the sales base.

Current issues are also affecting buyer behaviour in this market. Growing concern over the negative health implications of excessive sugar consumption, combined with widespread desire to avoid eating too much salt and saturated fat, is restricting the demand for ready meals and cooking sauces. More consumers are cooking ethnic meals from scratch, using cooking pastes, as this is the most effective way of knowing exactly what is being consumed. Exposure to new instances of food fraud, including the revelations regarding the false description of meat sold in takeaways, is fuelling this trend.

The versatility of the UK ethnic foods market (including rice) has allowed it to successfully exploit all these trends, contributing to steady growth over the last five years. It is expected that growth will continue throughout the next five years, as an increasingly varied selection of ethnic foods becomes more popular in the UK. This report therefore forecasts growth of 14.8% between 2014 and 2018.