Supermarket house brands put the squeeze on juice companies

Fruit juice is losing favour with Australians, with more than 1.5 million fewer Australians drinking packaged fruit juice each week than in 2010, new data from Roy Morgan Research shows.

In 2010, 8.6 million people (or 48%) drank juice in an average week. In 2014, this figure has dropped to just over 7 million, or 37% of the population.

Three brands still have the share of the market: Berri, Golden Circle and Daily Juice. However, even these top-performing brands have felt the squeeze in recent years.

• In 2010, 13.3% of Australians drank Berri. This has dropped to 7.5%.
• 8% of Australians drank Golden Circle juice in 2010. Now, just 5.6% of Australians choose this brand.
• Daily Juice was the pick for 7.2% of consumers in 2010, but now only 5.2% drink their juices.

Australians drinking top 7 fruit juice/drink brands in an average week. Source: Roy Morgan Single Source, July 2009 to June 2014.

Some of this decrease in the big brands’ grip on the market is attributable to Coles’ and Woolworths’ own-brand juice products gaining popularity. Both of these house brands have overtaken Just Juice in recent years.

3.4% of Australians now drink one of Woolworths’ own-brand varieties (up from 3.2% in 2010) and 2.9% drink Coles-brand juice (up from 2.4% in 2010).

Nudie brand juice has experienced considerable growth, with just 0.2% of consumers buying this product in 2010 compared to 1.8% today.

“It is notable that despite the popularity of packaged juice being clearly on the decline, the proportion of Australians now with a juice extractor in the home (26.4%) is virtually unchanged compared with 2010,” said Angela Smith, group account director - consumer products, Roy Morgan Research.

“Of course, whether or not they use them regularly is a whole other story!”