The torn middle of
the FMCG market.
Project Vesta — positioning in the European consumer-goods market, mid-2026.

Project Vesta is an anonymised case: a branded FMCG player whose range sits in the mid-price segment — above private label, below premium. For years this was the most stable position on the shelf. It no longer is.

The trigger for this assessment is an observation that repeats across almost every European FMCG market: revenue figures still look reasonable, volume figures do not. Look at value and you see growth. Look at units sold and you see standstill.

This insight arranges the publicly available market data so that Project Vesta's position becomes visible within it. It does not develop a strategy and issues no recommendation — that is explicitly outside the scope of an Insight engagement.

Globally, the FMCG market grew by 4.6 per cent in value in 2025. That growth is overwhelmingly price-driven. Set against it, European volume growth stands at just 0.6 per cent.

The European FMCG market was worth around €680 billion in 2024, 1.9 per cent above the previous year — again measured in value. The gap between value and volume development is the actual finding: the market is not selling more goods, it is selling the same goods at higher prices.

For a player in the middle segment this shifts the source of growth. Price increases worked in recent years because the entire shelf moved together. That movement is running out. The lever that carried growth is largely exhausted.

Private label accounted for 38.5 per cent of European FMCG value in 2024. In 2019 the figure was 35.4 per cent — a gain of 3.1 percentage points in five years, slow but uninterrupted.

What matters is the direction in volume: private label grew units by 1.3 per cent while branded products declined slightly. Private label is not merely gaining because it is cheaper and value share shifts arithmetically — it is genuinely winning units.

In the leading European markets the trend is considerably further advanced. In Switzerland, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal and the United Kingdom, private label share ranges between roughly 44 and 52 per cent. Several European markets are now above 40 per cent.

The driver is household value-seeking. It does not hit the shelf evenly but targets first those products whose premium over private label is no longer justified by a perceived difference. That is typically the middle.

The second movement runs across the first. Essential categories grew 1.6 per cent in volume, non-essential categories declined by 1.6 per cent. Households keep buying, but they buy differently: the necessary stays in the basket, the dispensable drops out.

At the same time a pull is forming at the top end. GLP-1 medication is measurably changing eating behaviour — around 70 per cent of users snack less. What remains shifts towards functional and protein-rich products. Less volume, but higher demands per unit.

For the middle this produces a pincer movement. Below, private label takes volume; above, premium and health-driven demand pulls away those buyers who would be willing to pay more. The mid segment loses at both edges without any single dramatic event causing it.

Project Vesta holds established brands with secured shelf presence in the mid segment. Pricing headroom has been used in the past, and in the essential categories of the range volume is still growing — the market yields 1.6 per cent there.

Against this stand four tensions drawn from the same data: private label is displacing branded products in volume. Price-driven growth is exhausted. GLP-1 is dampening classic snacking. And non-essential demand is in decline.

None of these points is acute on its own. Taken together they describe a position whose established growth mechanics no longer hold. That is the finding of this assessment.

Project Vesta sits in the mid-price segment — between private label and premium demand. Price-driven growth is exhausted.

That is a finding, not a recommendation. What a player in this position should conclude — defend the price point, move upmarket, expand essential categories or something else entirely — is a strategic decision this insight deliberately does not take.

An insight frames the situation. Evaluating the options with a fully modelled business case is the subject of an Advisory engagement.

The basis is triangulation of publicly available market sources. Market size and growth draw on Circana and Euromonitor, volume and demand on Circana and NielsenIQ, private label share on PLMA, NielsenIQ and Statista, and health and GLP-1 effects on EY, FTI, OCC and foodnavigator.

This is a condensed positioning assessment without proprietary forecasts. Share and growth figures diverge by source and market definition; where they do, the divergence is marked as a finding rather than smoothed into a single number.

Project Vesta is an anonymised case of a fictitious branded FMCG player. Data as of July 2026.