Euromonitor 2023: Global Tomato Pastes & Purées Market

Except for a dip in 2020, due to Covid-19, global retail sales of tomato pastes and purees are growing steadily and expected to continue so and notably in its two largest markets: Western Europe and the middle East and Africa.

In 2017, total sales of tomato pastes and purees (see definitions attached) absorbed nearly 3.67 million tonnes (t) of finished products worldwide. Sales fell off sharply in 2020, due to the health crisis that severely impacted the food-service sector, despite a clear shift in purchases from retail channels. Last year, sales of pastes are likely to have reached 4.06 million tonnes, on a trajectory that should take this volume to over 4.5 million tonnes by 2027.

Overall, the majority of sales are from retail outlets. In 2022, a year still marked by the effects of the measures imposed during the pandemic, 72% of paste volumes were sold in retail outlets, but Euromonitor forecasts a return, for the period 2023-2027, of the balance between retail distribution and the food-service sector to a situation close to that observed before the pandemic, when around 30% of paste sales were made in food-service channels.
 

Two markets, Western Europe and the Middle East/Africa, account for a very large share of global sales. In 2022, these two regions respectively absorbed 1.4 million t (35% of the total) and 975,000 t (25%), followed by the two American sub-continents with 659,000 t in Latin America (17% of the total) and 558,000 t in North America (14%). Together, the other three regions (Asia-Pacific, Australasia and Eastern Europe) accounted for just over 9% of global sales in 2022.
 

 

Given the situation in 2022 and Euromonitor's development forecasts, the most buoyant markets over the 2023-2027 period should be in the Middle East and Africa (CAGR 4.4%), Western Europe (1.4%) and Latin America (2.9%). North American pastes and purees sales were penalized by a period of stagnation (CAGR -0.1%) between 2017 and 2022, but should return to annual growth of around 1.7%. The regional contrast observed in terms of volumes also affects growth dynamics, since expected increases in the regions of Asia-Pacific, Australasia and Eastern Europe are likely to remain fairly minor compared with the overall figure. Euromonitor forecasts an average annual growth rate of 2.7% for the global market over the period 2023-2027, which should translate into an increase of around 560,000 t in sales volumes.
 

 

In fact, the sometimes impressive developments forecast by Euromonitor should consolidate the respective positions without altering the relative importance of the different regions. By 2027, sales volumes in Western Europe, the world's largest market for pastes and purees, could exceed 1.5 million tonnes, nearly 25% higher than in the second largest market, the Middle East and Africa (1.2 million tonnes). The Latin American market, similar in size to the North American market in 2017, is expected to stand out clearly from the latter, consolidating its position as the world's third-largest market, with sales of around 760,000 t (compared with around 610,000 t in North America). Sales in the other three regions (Asia-Pacific, Australasia and Eastern Europe) should increase from 362,000 t in 2022 to 433,000 t in 2027.
 

Some complementary data:
Distribution of pastes and purees sales volumes in 2022 for each of the eight regions identified by Euromonitor. Retailers in Eastern Europe (84.8%) and the Middle East and Africa (84.2%) account for the largest share of sales. Conversely, the food-service sector's best performance in terms of sales was in Asia-Pacific (48.6%) and North America (68.2%).

Source: Euromonitor International