Over 1m fewer households bought meat free products in Britain this January, with just 13.7% buying a meat free product according to Kantar data published by AHDB, the English levy body this week.

This compares with 96.4% of households buying a meat or fish-based product in the same period. In the first three weeks in January, meat fish and poultry (MFP) sales volume fell by 3.2% though the value of sales increased by 8.3% reflecting the higher cost of these products.

In this period, the volume of meat substitute products sold fell by 12.9% in volume, with the value of sales down by 6.3%.

Despite heavy promotion and considerable investment in new product development, meat substitute products or fake meat have maintained just an average 2% share of the market over the past four years according to AHDB.

Despite the overall poor performance, the sector does get a boost in January, and this year sales were 36% higher than an average three week period in 2022 outside the promotion month of January.

Veganuary gives the product a boost relative to normal sales, but when comparing with previous Veganuary’s the “boost” is getting less.

The lack of consumer traction for these type of products is also reflected in the financial performance of the manufacturers. Beyond Meat, who manufacture the McPlant burger for McDonald’s, reported a sales slump with net revenue down 22.5% for the third quarter of 2022 to $82.5m (€76.3m).

Oatly, the manufacturer of substitute milk products reported losses of $107.9m (€100m) in November 2022 when losses of $62m (€57.4m) were expected by the market.