The French had rediscovered the taste of milk when they went into lockdown in 2020, but the hiatus quickly closed. The consumption of liquid milk fell by 3.9% in volume in 2022, to 2,650 million liters, after having already fallen by 5.6% the previous year, according to the latest figures from the Syndilait interprofessional.
Not really a surprise: milk consumption has been eroding year on year in France for several decades: the year 2020 alone had swum against the current, registering an unusual increase of 4.9%.
Fluid milk is mostly, and almost exclusively, drunk at home for breakfast or as an ingredient in cooking. However, its consumption suffers from a disaffection on the part of the French for the first meal of the day and the lack of time to prepare their own meals -unlike the times of confinement in 2020-.
It also faces competition from other morning drinks, particularly orange juice. If 61% of adolescents from 12 to 17% ate milk for breakfast in 2016, it was already only 52% in 2019.
Dairy free or flavored
However, some specific milks are favored by the French and are reversing the trend. Thus, lactose-free UHT milk saw its sales increase by 3.3% in volume in 2022 compared to 2021, while flavored UHT milk remained stable (-0.9%).
To boost sales, manufacturers have multiplied innovations and new references in recent years. A way of responding to the new demands of consumers and of trying to remove milk from a restricted consumption at breakfast, as a more classic drink.
Despite the drop in volumes, the liquid milk market saw its turnover increase by 4.6% in 2022, to 2,370 million euros. Indeed, the average price of liquid milk increased by 7.9% last year compared to the previous year, standing at 1.07 euros per liter on average in supermarkets.
Fluid milk accounted for 12.6% of all dairy products sold in supermarkets in 2022.
Source: BFM TV
