The popularity of drinking yoghurts has started to wane, according to a new report.
These products accounted for only 8.5 per cent of total global dairy launches in the year to October 2015, said Innova Market Insights.
While tracked launch numbers have increased over the past five years, the category’s share of overall dairy activity has fallen.
“The drinking yoghurt market has enjoyed mixed fortunes in recent years,” said Lu Ann Williams, Innova’s director of innovation.
“A positioning that falls between traditional spoonable yoghurts, milk drinks and other soft drinks has proven to be a mixed blessing, with high levels of competition in all these areas.”
After a period of strong growth in the first half of the 2000s, driven by rising interest in healthy and convenient options, the market also found itself split into two separate areas – single-serve dose-delivery active health drinks and traditional drinking yoghurts – with the latter increasingly under pressure from the former.
This position has tended to reverse with the regulatory changes preventing the use of probiotic claims in key markets such as Europe, which accounts for over half of launches in the sub-category.
The drinking yoghurt market is attempting to move on with new formats and target markets, although the focus on health aspects of yoghurt remains strong.
Over 80 per cent of global launches recorded in the 12 months to the end of October featured health claims of some kind, rising to 98 per cent in the US.
The term “probiotic” was disallowed in the EU, but an association of yoghurt with digestive or gut health has clearly been made.
It is the most popular claim globally, used on over half of drinking yoghurt launches.
Other popular claims relate to low and light, with nearly 45 per cent of launches featuring low-fat, low-sugar and low-calorie claims.
Interest in clean label is also evident, with over one-fifth of launches using natural or no additive/preservative claims, rising to nearly 27 per cent if organic claims are also included.
There are now indications that the market is moving forward, with a particular focus on yoghurt and fruit blends in a smoothie format, while there’s also been a rising interest in yoghurt-style fermented drinks that has brought products such as kefir, lassi and ayran into mainstream markets in non-traditional regions.
A high-profile recent arrival was the Icelandic yoghurt-style fermented dairy product Skyr in countries such as the US, the UK and mainland Europe, in drinkable and smoothie formats.
There has also been a focus on offering liquid yoghurt products for the breakfast market, both in cartons and for on-the-go replacements in resealable plastic bottles.
