Healthy and nutritional bars market grow to 1.4 billion Euros

The market for healthy and nutritional bars is soaring, despite the economic recession.

The European snack bars sales have seen strong growth in 2009 with growth rate of 5% to 1.4 billion Euros ($1.93 billion).

The main five groups are breakfast bars, energy and nutritional bars, fruit bars, granola/muesli bars and other snack bars.

The positioning ‘added fiber’ in bars can make a big difference in income, according to Lu Ann Williams, research director with Innova Database.

In 2009, approximately 4,500 new bars contained a claim or a reference to ‘fiber’, which was an increase of 1.2%.

Prices of fiber-enriched products ranges run from $11.4/kg to $19.9/kg, a substantial mark-up from regular bars.