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Global Retail for several quarters. Tesco, the country's biggest supermarket chain, has a 28 percent share of the smoked salmon retail market, followed by Sainsbury's with 21.1 per- cent and Waitrose in third place with 13 percent. Tesco's market share of smoked salm- on has actually decreased by 2 percent in the last 12 months, but Sainsbury's and Waitrose have achieved increases of 1.2 percent and 0.3 percent, respectively. Also making a noteworthy advance is fourth- placed Morrisons, which has grown its market share from 8.6 percent to 10.4 percent. One of the most successful Smoked on fire UK retail downturn can't slow smoked salmon sales BY JASON HOLLAND T he origins of the smoked salmon in- dustry predate the arrival of the U.K.'s first retail stores by many centuries, yet the appeal of the product has never been stronger than at present. According to figures from Nielsen Scantrack, the coun- try's total smoked seafood retail market is currently val- ued at around £346.3 million (€438.6 million; $549.2 mil- lion) per year, including more than £171 million (€216.6 42 SeaFood Business October 2012 million; $271.2 million) worth of smoked salmon. In volume terms, smoked salmon accounts for 8 million metric tons (MT) of the total 26.4 million MT of smoked fish sold in the market. And despite the volume of smoked salmon sold increasing by 4.1 percent in the 12 months ending June 25, the aver- age retail price still grew to £21.26 (€26.87; $33.77) per kilogram, a year-on-year in- crease of 2.7 percent, which is all the more impressive when factoring in that re- tail food sales have been flat private-label retail launches in the U.K. in the past two years is the Heston from Waitrose Lapsang Souchong Tea Smoked Salmon, created for Waitrose by celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal as part of his tie-in with the upper-end supermarket chain that began in 2010 and manufactured by Scottish processor Macrae Edinburgh Ltd. Using farmed salmon from Scotland, Waitrose's product is cured in a mixture of sea salt and sugar and then smoked for 10 hours over a mix of oak chippings and Lapsang Souchong tea, which is a black tea originally from the Wuyi region of the Chinese province of Fujian. Waitrose says the manufacturing pro- cess "imparts a complex, but delicate smoky flavor." Sold in 100-gram packs as part of the fast expanding Heston from Waitrose range, the product retails at £4.49 (€5.67; $7.13), which places it at the upper-end of the retail spectrum. Neverthe- less, buoyed by the feel-good factor of the London 2012 Olympics, sales of the prod- uct surged by more than 600 percent in the first week of August and sources expected the trend to continue at least into September. The red brick kilns used by producer John Ross Jr. date back to 1857. Quality focus While supermarket private- label products underpin the smoked salmon retail catego- ry, the market is also awash with other successful brands. "Smoked salmon is a fierce- ly competitive market and over the years that competive- ness has grown; there are more producers now than there were 25 years ago," confirms Vicky Leigh, sales director with John Ross Jr., which pro- duces Scottish smoked salm- on in traditional, 150-year-old brick kilns and is the largest producer of Scottish smoked salmon in the world. Te company was found- ed 25 years ago by Leigh's father and remains a family- owned and operated busi- ness. Its U.K. customer base includes longstanding contracts with Waitrose and Harrods and it also exports to more than 30 countries. "He spotted a gap in the market for a premium prod- uct — not premium in the sense of an expensive product but premium high-quality. We have stuck to that to this day," says Leigh. "Our entire business is growing, both domestically and in international markets. Our business model was origi- nally based on exporting but the U.K. market has grown more in recent years. Tis is the second recession that John Ross has been through — as far as we are concerned, it's about being clever about things and working with cus- tomers on a long-term basis," says Leigh. John Ross Jr., which holds the Royal Warrant that al- lows it to supply products to the British Royal Family, has eight key cold-smoked salm- on products as well as two hot-smoked products, but Visit us online at www.seafoodbusiness.com Photo courtesy of John Ross Jr.