The Innovation Barometer, powered by BASES Innovation Measurement and Consumer Panel Services (CPS), quickly identifies, categorizes, and measures innovations, to bring you a quarterly update on the most active players in CPG innovation, what’s up, what’s down, who’s winning, who’s losing and more. By using NielsenIQ sales data and consumer panel data, we give you an overview of innovation activity and performance across six key super-categories: food, confectionary and snacks, beverages, alcoholic beverages, home care and personal care.
September 2025 Edition
What is the current state of innovation in the CPG industry in Western Europe?
Compared to a year ago, total sales increased by 3.1%, while sales coming from innovations declined by 4.9%.
The overall number of products available in the market across all categories decreased by 2.7%, with new products declining by almost 17%.
Innovations were on average 11% higher priced positioned compared to the average price of the category compared to a year ago and while average item velocity increased, innovation velocity dropped by 10.7%.
Despite holding the largest share, food is the category that experienced the steepest decline in the number of innovation items
179k
innovation items were launched in last 52 weeks
% of Innovation Contribution to Total Sales
Innovation Contribution
Home Care
23.6%
-3.3 pts vs YA
Total Market
9.3%
0.8 pts vs YA
Non alcoholic beverages
4.8%
-0.4 pts vs YA
Average Item Velocity
Food
11.998
+4.2% vs YA
Total Market
7.200
-10.7% vs YA
Personal Care
3.342
-7.9% vs YA
Category Spotlight
Confectionery and Snacks
Cereal bars and chocolate confectionery stand out with above-average innovation contribution
Innovation sales holds
9.1%
of total Confectionery & Snacks sales
% of Innovation Contribution to Total Sales
5 most innovation active brand owners in Confectionery & Snacks
1
Mondelēz International
370
2
Lindt & Sprüngli
351
3
Nestlé
272
4
Ferrero
269
5
Pepsico
136
Source: BASES Innovation Measurement, total innovations launched by brand owner. , Europe (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK); Last 52 weeks until September 15, 2025
Want to know which innovations made the cut?
Great Britain leads the way, with an average of 3,7% of households trying the top recent Confectionery & Snacks innovation items.
About 30% of consumers repurchased the innovation items at least once after 6 months of launch.
High trial is also visible in Italy for top recent launches, following closely Germany, despite almost half number of items.
Most penetrated 10 launches per country (launched between 17th July’24 until 28th Dec’24)
Avg. Cumulated % Trial and Repeat after 28 weeks as of launch
Source: NIQ Homescan data ending 15th June 2025. Most penetrated 10 innovations cover New Brands/brand extensions, New Subbrands, New Variants (flavours), that launched in the past 12 months and have at least 6 months of presence (seasonals and in & out products are excluded). SKUs referring to the same product are grouped as one (e.g. all new Flavours of a single Category-Brand-Subbrand combination within the year)
Across Western Europe, top-penetrated launches show mixed dynamics: some need to boost trial, despite strong repeat rates — others must address why trialists aren’t coming back, even with high initial reach.
While some need to drive penetration, other need to rethink low number of trialist repeating purchase
The #1 most penetrated Confectionery & Snack launch in each WE country
(launched between 17th July’24 until 28th Dec’24
Source: NIQ Homescan data ending 15th June 2025(Penetration by 15th June’25 and “% of Trialists repeating purchase by 15th June’25).
Most penetrated innovations cover New Brands/brand extensions, New Subbrands, New Variants (flavours), that launched in the past 12 months and have at least 6 months of presence (seasonals and in & out products are excluded). SKUs referring to the same product are grouped as one (e.g. all new Flavours of a single Category-Brand-Subbrand combination within the year).
France Snack Bar
-lower penetration (1.9%)
-higher number of trialist repeating purchase (32%)
UK Chocolate
– higher penetration (5.0%)
-lower number of trialist repeating purchase (17%)
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