The sale of organic foods reached record high levels in Sweden last year and now accounts for 3.4 percent of total sales.

Sweden’s food shops made a record last year as the sale of food and beverages in retail trade was at its highest level ever, amounting to 206 billion kronor (€20 billion, $29 billion), the statistics office said Thursday. 

Still, the big success was organic foods which reached record high levels in sales. Organic products account for 3.4 percent of all the food and beverages sold in Sweden, an increase of 0.8 percentage points compared to the previous year.

“Organic fish proved the rising star as sales rose from 0.3 percent to 3.0 percent”, Statistics Sweden said in its report.

In 2004 organic products accounted for 1.9 percent of sales.  Since then, sales of organic products have increased significantly more than the percentage of organic products in the assortment of products available.

At ICA, one of the Nordic region’s leading retail companies, sales of organic products swelled 54 percent last year while the range of products almost doubled.

“We constantly analyze the trends on the market. Last year wasn’t just an increase in sales but an increase in the variety of organic goods”, said Anna Hedström, spokeswoman at ICA, adding that the company is eying a continued increase in demand of organic goods.