Sharwood’s targets younger home cooks with new £1 million ad campaign

The brand is owned by FTSE 250 firm, Premier Foods (PR image)

(Sharwood’s)

Premier Foods brand Sharwood’s will attempt to tap into the young, more plant-based market with a £1 million new advertising campaign - the brand's first in five years - following Britons' lockdown cooking boom.

The FTSE 250 firm said the brand’s Asian sauces and meal-kits saw sales up 40% in the three months to December 26, compared to the same quarter a year earlier. Sales of chutneys and relishes increased by 32%, and world ingredients by 24%, in the year.

The new campaign for the brand, which was first established in 1889, centres on India's modern street food vendors, and will showcase "better for you" and vegan home-cooking kits.

The company is banking on the home-cooking boom being here to stay once lockdown lifts this summer.

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Its new Kitchen Cooking Index report, released today, found that 91% of people surveyed intend to cook the same amount, or more, over the year ahead - potentially indicating a lasting shift in consumer habits - while more than 80% of people said they intend to eat more healthily in 2021.

Premier Foods chief executive, Alex Whitehouse, said: “What is great to see is that, even when we look ahead to a time when things have returned to normal, the majority of us want to keep cooking the same amount or more.”

In January the company issued full year profit guidance for the year to March 2021 of £145-£150 million, up around 12% from £132.6 million a year earlier.

The firm, which is also behind brands including Oxo and Ambrosia, is also launching its Mr Kipling cakes in America in a bid to make the classic British cake a US household name.

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