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Dieters still hungry for weight-loss products
The opportunity for weight loss certainly hasn’t gone away — sales of diet-aid liquids were up 12.8% to $1.2 billion for the 52 weeks ended Sept. 9 across food, drug and mass (excluding Walmart), according to SymphonyIRI. And due to the temporary absence of GlaxoSmithKline’s Alli — unavailable because of a raw-ingredient sourcing issue — sales of diet-aid tablets are down with a 7% decline to a dollar base of $205.4 million. Alli had been removed from the market in March due to the third-party supply issue and returned in late June.
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New intros warm up soup category
New introductions should put some heat back into the soup category. The category’s performance — according to a recent report from Mintel — has been lukewarm, with a compounded annual growth rate of only 1% from 2006 to 2011.
Mintel expects performance to improve as the economy bounces back and as manufacturers bring more innovation to the sleepy category. The market research firm expects the soup market to reach $7.2 billion in sales in current dollars by 2016, a compounded growth of more than 2%.