Daily Mail

Love Marmite? You’ll hate this ...there’s a drought at the shops

- By Sean Poulter Consumer Affairs Editor

BREAKFAST has become a little more miserable for Marmite lovers – as a national ‘drought’ leaves many supermarke­t shelves bare.

Supply of the much loved – and hated – condiment has been hit by the closure of breweries during lockdown, robbing manufactur­ers of its key ingredient, yeast.

And now a snapshot survey, carried out by the Daily Mail, has found that the spread remains scarce in many online stores.

Marmite was not available in some areas through the Sainsbury’s and Ocado online shops, according to the research.

Other retailers – such as Tesco, Morrisons and Waitrose – had limited supplies of the small 250g jars rather than larger pots.

Asda was the only supermarke­t surveyed which had both the smaller and larger 500g jars.

It comes nearly a year after Unilever, which owns Marmite, temporaril­y halted all production of the spread except for its small 250g jars.

However, the company said it hopes shelves will be fully re- stocked later this year as the re-opening of pubs and breweries looks to boost beer production. A Unilever spokesman said: ‘We’ve continued to see high demand for Marmite with more people making meals at home during lockdown as well as reduced supply of yeast from the breweries that supply us. ‘As pubs and hospitalit­y begin to open up once more, we expect the full range of jars to be back on supermarke­t shelves over the coming months.’ The shortage was highlighte­d on the BBC Good

Food Facebook group by Kelly Richardson who posted: ‘Is anyone else struggling to get Marmite in their part of the country?

‘I know it’s due to the lack of beer making etc but can’t find it in Brighton!’

Lauren Panther responded: ‘Yes in Wiltshire, I resorted to a jar from Amazon.’

Angela Walker, of County Durham, added: ‘Our household was going through a big jar a week.

‘Then all of a sudden I just couldn’t get hold of it in any of our local supermarke­ts.’

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