Bord Bia has teamed up with Irish retailers to raise consumer awareness of the choice and availability of Irish organic produce. The body has developed digital and in-store promotional materials for the ‘Organics from Ireland’ campaign, which retailers can use to highlight their organic Irish beef, lamb, dairy, seafood, eggs, fresh produce and prepared consumer foods.
The campaign will appear in-store across Tesco, SuperValu and on Aldi and Lidl social media channels from now until September. Bord Bia retail specialist Fiona Twomey said that from research they conducted last year which found that when faced with a choice between organic and local, over 66 per cent of Irish shoppers preferred local.
Based on this insight, Bord Bia launched this pilot project to raise consumer awareness of the availability of organic food from Ireland so that they can choose both organic and local. Ireland’s organically farmed area is currently 1.6 per cent of all agricultural land. Under the government’s Food Vision 2030 strategy, the aim is to see an increase to 7.5 per cent by 2030.
Opportunity
Research commissioned by Bord Bia last year found that the best opportunity for growth in the organic market is through the retail channel where sales of organic produce have grown 19 per cent since 2019. Kantar reported that retail sales of organic foods were valued at €221 million over a 52 week period, ending October 2021, up 2.7 per cent from 2020.
Bord Bia will run campaigns to promote Irish organic produce in Europe: Irish organic beef promotions will continue to run in-store with Dutch retailer Vomar; three media campaigns promoting Irish organic salmon will run in 2022 targeting French and German consumers, while campaigns to promote Irish organic mussels will run in stores across France.
