Clear trends in the industry in 2021 – part 1

Powerful kitchen appliances are beating food processors and advanced home coffee is gaining ground. What other trends can we see from 2021?

Last year, APPLiAnytt reported a number of crystal-clear product trends in white goods and household appliances in a series of articles based on industry sales in 2020. The pandemic year 2020 was in many ways a trend-breaking year. Now that it is time to focus on a number of trends over the past year, we can conclude that 2021 is not as trend-breaking, but rather consolidates most of the trends we previously reported on.

A little less exciting, BUT no less interesting for us industry professionals! We have now collected the most important trends that appeared in 2021, and where we can now present an excerpt from this trend report here in APPLiAnytt.

SDA in focus

In this edition of APPLiAnytt we tackle some of the most visible trends within SDA (Small Domestic Appliances). In future newsletters from APPLiAnytt, the strongest trends within MDA (Major Domestic Appliances) will also be highlighted.

In the record year 2020, SDA sales in Sweden increased by a whopping +23 percent in value terms. The increase continued at that rate during the first part of 2021, but a clear slowdown occurred in the last quarter of the year. Despite the fact that the volume of household appliances for the full year landed at the same level as the previous record year, the value sales of SDA reached an increase of +8 percent compared to 2020! The explanation for this is 'higher average prices' due to consumers choosing to purchase more high-performance appliances to a greater extent than before.

Trend 1: Heavy-duty kitchen appliances beat food processors

The ultimate kitchen helper – food processors – is strongly taking share from smaller food processors, which are reducing their share from 60 percent the previous year to 50 percent in 2021. The sales volume itself increased by a full 50 percent for food processors under 6 liters capacity and 12 percent for the very largest ones with ≥ 6 liters capacity.

From 2019, when food processors accounted for a full 66 percent of the kitchen appliance market, the trend is clear; larger kitchen appliances are increasing more and more at the expense of smaller food processors. We see the background in the sharply increasing home baking (yeast sales for home use have increased by 202 percent) and the increase in home eating (102 percent more traffic to the recipe category “homemade food” at ica.se) during the pandemic years.

Trend 2: Advanced home coffee is gaining ground

The market for coffee machines has received a real boost during the pandemic. Home coffee became much more important when working from home for many Swedes. In 2020, sales of all different types of coffee machines reached record highs with a 35 percent increase in value.

In 2021, filter coffee makers have had a bit of a tougher time as sales of these slowed down during the 3rd and 4th quarters, while automatic espresso makers and those using pods or capsules still have 'pandemic' high growth rates throughout 2021. These two product segments now account for 26 percent of the market in 2021 - a sharp increase from 20 percent in 2020.

Trend 3: Healthy frying without oil

After the introduction of hot air fryers, which make gallons of frying oil redundant, their sales have increased steadily. More consumers can now enjoy fried food without having to handle hot frying oil. The growth has occurred among new fryers in Swedish kitchens with oil-free hot air fryers now accounting for more than 82 percent of the market.

The health trend of frying without fat is the underlying trend that has caused sales to escalate for this relatively new product on the market. But the convenience of not having to handle liters of oil when frying has also of course influenced the development.

The number of traditional oil fryers has remained fairly constant over the years, they have their loyal advocates, while hot air fryers have found favor with a new customer group who previously did not consider themselves able to handle frying with large amounts of hot oil in their kitchens. Therefore, the proportion of oil fryers is decreasing year by year. The safety aspect, avoiding hot oil in the kitchen, is certainly also responsible for the expansive sales development of hot air fryers.

Trend 4: Stable among floor vacuum cleaners

In 2020, there was a clear trend among traditional floor vacuum cleaners (cylinder vacuum cleaners in technical terms) towards an incipiently larger proportion of bagless vacuum cleaners sold, but now it turns out that we Swedes mostly want bags in our vacuum cleaners. In 2021, this will stabilize and the 6 percent share of the number of floor vacuum cleaners sold, which bagless vacuum cleaners achieved in 2020, will also hold in 2021. A stabilization of a trend is also a trend…

Trend 5: Livelier among ”other vacuum cleaners”

The biggest change in the vacuum cleaner category is the strong growth of stick vacuum cleaners, which now account for 88 percent of sales of the 'lighter' vacuum cleaners compared to the handheld variants. In 2021, the range of different models of these stick vacuum cleaners has increased in the trade, which has boosted sales by just over 19 percent compared to the previous year. The increased average prices also indicate that the range of higher-performance products in this product category has found favor among Swedish consumers.

Exclusively for our member companies, the complete trend report for 2021 from APPLiA will be presented in PDF format in the member newsletter APPLiA-Info on February 21.

Kent Oderud, Chairman

Market development