Czech organic market: 40 percent growth in 2008

The turnover with organic food in the Czech Republic grew by 40 percent in 2008 and reached 1.8 billion Czech Crowns or 68 million Euros. Czech consumers thus spent more than 0.5 billion Czech Crowns more than in 2007, Green Marketing reports.

Development of the organic land and farms in the Czech Republic 1991-2008. Source: Ministry of Agriculture, Prague. Graph: FiBL

According to a recent press release of Green marketing, the Czech organic market has been growing very dynamically over the past three years. The overall turnover has gone up by more than 250 percent since 2005.

The average consumption per capita was 6.6 Euros in 2008; organic food and drink had a share of 0.75 percent of the total Czech food and drink market last year. This constitutes a 36 percent grwoth compared to the previous year.

The share of imported organic food and drink on the total turnover was 57 percent in 2008, a decline of 5 percent compared to 2007.

'The number of organic food manufacturers grows rapidly. Particularly in the beef, bakery, milk and spices categories the share of domestic products is very high', comments Tom Vaclavik of Green marketing.

The largest organic category on the Czech market remains processed food, even though its share declined slightly to 46 percent.
The 'milk products' and 'fresh produce' categories have gained shares comapred to the previous year and have reached 22 and 6 percent, respectively.
The largest sub-category is baby food, it has a share of over 17 percent of the total organic market. The main suppliers are HiPP (Germany) and Hame (Czech Republic).

The most important marketing channel for organic food are supermarkets and hypermarkets. Their share of the total turnover has been growing steadily and reached 72 percent in 2008, 5 percent more than in 2007. This trend will probably continue as the retailers keep introducing their private organic brands and expand offer. The retailers' private organic brands had more than 20 percent share of the total number of organic products in this marketing channel.

The share of organic and health food shops has declined from 22.5 percent in 2007 to 19 percent in 2008.

At the end of 2008 there were 1946 organic farmers in the Czech Republic, over 600 more than in 2008. The organic agricultural area grew by 28'742 hectares to a total of 341'632 hectares in 2008. The share of organic farmland has reached 8.04% of the total agricultural land.

Contact

Tom Vaclavik
Green marketing
Tel. + 420 541 263 456
tom(at)greenmarketing.cz
http://www.greenmarketing.cz/

Further Information

Organic-World.net: Czech Republic

Czech Ministry of Agriculture: Organic Farming in the Czech Republic 2008