It’s been another year of high drama in grocery, with everything from pointless government probes and the public struggles of one of the country’s biggest retailers to soaring sales, devastating losses and a very high-profile cheese heist.
As the year draws to a close we look back over what hit the headlines – the highs, the lows and, let’s be frank, the downright ridiculous, in The Grocer’s 100% unofficial review of 2024.
A new entry will be added each day until the end of December. Today we cast our eye over a dramatic fall from grace…
Fallen angel of the year: Prime
Nobody had a 2023 as good as Prime. Unfortunately for the influencer-backed soft drink, nobody has had a 2024 quite so bad either. Suspicions were raised early in the year when bottles of Hydration began cropping up on social media discounted to as little as 31p in Tesco. Then came the reveal by The Grocer that sales were down more than 50% year on year in the first quarter of 2024.
A string of damaging lawsuits in the US followed over the summer, including one that alleged some Prime products contained toxic “forever chemicals” at three times the limit of what a human should consume in an entire lifetime. Prime ended 2024 having seen its sales in UK shops almost halve to £73.5m [NIQ 52 we 9 September]. That’s still no mean feat for a brand less than three years old, but something needs to change to stop the buzz from fading permanently.
James Beeson
Epic fail of the year: Red Tractor
It may have been developed with the best of intentions, but Red Tractor’s launch of the Greener Farms Commitment, and the angry fallout linked to it, left the farm assurance scheme teetering on the edge at the turn of the year.
Red Tractor’s development of the GFC – a voluntary, sustainability-focused, bolt-on module to its core standard – alongside major supermarkets but without consultation of the farmers that would have to meet its demands left the sector enraged. Many called for the abolition of the scheme altogether.
Initial attempts to hold the line went down like a sack of manure. Red Tractor CEO Jim Moseley managed to further enrage the scheme’s members in February by telling The Grocer it was “not here” to simply “deliver for farmers”.
But by March, in the wake of an independent review that found, while “sound”, Red Tractor had dropped the ball when it came to stakeholder communications, the scheme – facing a continuing backlash – decided to kill off the GFC.
Now-former Red Tractor chair Christine Tacon admitted “errors had been made” and promised Red Tractor would never introduce environmental standards unless asked for by “all constituencies across the UK food and farming chain” – and with full consultation. Lesson learned.
Kevin White
Mass resignation of the year: Ella’s Kitchen
Everyone knows what ’restructuring’ really means - but when Ella’s Kitchen US parent company started cutting costs, things went a little further than planned.
Category captain Ella’s Kitchen has always been a star performer in the UK for owner Hain Celestial, quietly delivering double-digit growth every year.
That all changed in late 2023, as drastic measures were taken to halt a worrying performance decline. The ‘Hain Reimagined’ action plan included a headcount reduction as part of a cost-cutting drive, with Ella’s expected to share the pain.
However, Hain bosses weren’t expecting Ella’s well-respected, long-term CEO Mark Cuddigan to fall on his sword rather than taking the axe to his team.
He was swiftly followed out the door in January 2024 by COO Will Howard, who stepped into Cuddigan’s shoes temporarily, as well as finance director James Waters, operations director Nella Jansson-Wright and HR director Catherine Allen.
And just like that, Ella’s lost more than 50 years of experience from the business virtually overnight. Reeling, Hain parachuted in US-based vice-president Tim Collins as the new Ella’s MD to take control of the situation and attempt to restock the brand’s reserves of expertise.
Ed Devlin
Dragged through the mud award: Unilever by the CMA
For the past year or so, Unilever has been battered by several public accusations of potential greenwashing from the Competition & Markets Authority (CMA). The watchdog opened an investigation into the Magnum and Dove maker last year as part of its efforts to crack down on misleading green claims across the fmcg sector, which it believed were rife.
At the time, the CMA was “concerned that Unilever may be overstating how green certain products are through the use of vague and broad claims, unclear statements around recyclability and ‘natural’ looking images and logos”. It even said it had “uncovered a range of concerning practices” from the supplier.
But just a year later, and without much explanation, it closed its probe, alleging it had “decided as a matter of administrative priority to close this investigation”. Lack of resources on the watchdog’s part? Good levels of co-operation on Unilever’s part? We will never know.
Maria Gonçalves
Hero of the year: Minette Batters
All good things must come to an end. After six years as the first woman at the helm of the NFU – having held several senior positions in the union before that – Minette Batters stood down in February this year.
Described as the best president in NFU history, in her time as president of the union Batters locked horns with six secretaries of state, while contending with Brexit, Covid, international wars and a cost of living crisis.
In an exclusive interview with The Grocer, Batters said it had been a “massive privilege” to lead the union but there was still so much that needed to be done.
And Tom Bradshaw, her successor, has already hit the ground running.
Grace Duncan
Story of the year: Asda’s annus horribilis
The biggest mistake made by the Issa brothers in their takeover of Asda from Walmart must surely have been not signing a megabucks deal with Netflix to cover the saga.
A fly-on-the-wall documentary revealing the extraordinary (mis)fortunes of one of the UK’s biggest supermarkets this year would have made for supremely gripping telly – even if some events were so incredible some may have presumed they were staged.
The Asda story has the lot: sibling fallouts; blood on the carpet (by the gallon) in the board room; and a whole series of shock announcements.
Sadly, for the Asda workforce and those harking back to its days as one of the industry’s great institutions, the impact has been all too real. There has been a flood of departures from Asda House at all levels, and questions are being asked as to how Asda and its co-owners TDR Capital can turn things around.
This was the year the Issa brothers’ dream began to come apart at the seams. After months of speculation and rumours of a rift between the siblings, it was confirmed Zuber Issa was stepping away and selling his stake to TDR, the chain’s private equity backer.
But within three months brother Mohsin was also out of the Asda hotseat, after chairman Stuart Rose dubbed Asda’s performance “embarrassing”. Still unable to find a CEO (after three years) Rose himself took over day-to-day operations – at the age of 75.
With Asda’s market share in freefall – and with the retailer struggling to turn around issues with availability, service and morale in store – Rose and TDR partner Rob Hattrell dropped yet another bombshell last month when they announced nearly 500 job losses in a cull aimed at cutting costs. A further £13m on top of the £30m allocated before Issa quit was announced to try to turn around struggling stores.
But despite Rose’s claim that he was “getting back to shopkeeping”, his time holding the reins was to be limited. After taking an ill-advisedly hard-nosed approach to the redundancies – telling The Grocer “that’s life” – he too had stepped aside by the time November was out.
Entering stage left very late in this annus horribilis, in strode 71-year-old Allan Leighton, who was parachuted in to replace Rose as executive chairman. He came in bullish, promising to roll back the years and return Asda to its ethos and attendant successes of the past.
It was a sensational comeback. Leighton was chief executive from 1996 to 2000 and oversaw a dramatic turnaround alongside chairman Archie Norman – the sort of incredible volte-face that Asda dreams of now.
With Leighton promising to rediscover Asda’s DNA by taking a “back to the future with modernity” approach, he received a hero’s welcome at Asda House, albeit one still reeling from the recent cuts.
But with Asda facing cut-throat competition from the discounters, as well as its traditional rivals, Christmas will provide Leighton with an early test. And with a CEO still nowhere in sight, the Asda drama will have plenty more twists as we go into the new year.
Ian Quinn
Smoke and mirrors award: Zoe
All eyes were on Zoe when it launched a gut health shot into M&S at the start of the year. Containing over five billion live cultures, the milk-based drink gained almost as many column inches.
But it soon emerged that funds weren’t quite so plentiful. In April, Zoe’s CEO and co-founder Jonathan Wolf announced reductions to its headcount in an urgent economy drive to reduce costs by 20%.
Despite some hefty fundraising – including investment from Steven Bartlett – the company’s burn rate was looking “much too high”, he revealed. In October, another hammer blow came in the form of more redundancies.
The question now is whether Zoe will push further into grocery – it launched a whole foods supplement into Waitrose in June – or focus on its home-testing roots.
Emma Weinbren
Villain of the year: the Post Office
It’s been a scandal in plain sight for 30 years but Mr Bates vs The Post Office, the ITV drama, which aired in January, brought the Horizon IT scandal to life for millions of viewers, and turned the Post Office into public enemy number one.
But the public outrage has done more than that. It’s also delivered unprecedented mass exonerations.
Announcing plans to pardon, in one fell swoop, the 900 postmasters who were wrongly prosecuted thanks to faults in the Post Office computer system, then prime minister Rishi Sunak described it as “one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation’s history”.
The legislation was pushed through on the day of the general election in July, with postmasters receiving letters confirming their entitlement to compensation. The Post Office predicts it will have paid out £1.15bn in compensation to postmasters by March 2026.
The scandal has also claimed a number of casualties. In January chairman Henry Staunton was removed from office. In February disgraced former CEO Paula Vennells was forced to hand back her CBE and in October current CEO Nick Read resigned ahead of the results of a lengthy independent inquiry.
But the scandal isn’t over. Many postmasters are still awaiting compensation. And in terms of justice, while “dozens” have been identified as “persons of interest”, the police said this week that prosecutions won’t begin until 2027.
Dene Mullen
Daylight robbery award: The Neal’s Yard cheese theft
OK, so it wasn’t quite Brad Pitt and George Clooney smouldering their way around Las Vegas, but replace Nevada’s glittering casinos with a London-based artisanal dairy, and hundreds of millions of dollars with 22 tonnes of cheddar cheese, and you’ve got one of this year’s craziest fmcg stories.
Neal’s Yard Dairy revealed in October that it had been scammed out of cheese worth more than £300,000 after it delivered 950 clothbound artisan cheddars to a fraudster posing as a wholesale distributor for a large French retailer.
The story attracted untold column inches, with Jamie Oliver even getting involved with a plea for the public to help catch the thieves. “There has been a great cheese robbery,” he wrote in a post on Instagram.
A few days later, a 63-year-old man was arrested and questioned by detectives on suspicion of fraud and handling stolen goods, although the cheese itself was said to have made its way to Russia or the Middle East, leaving Neal’s Yard to foot the bill.
“The complexity of the operation made it difficult to detect the fraud until it was too late,” the company said. Perhaps they should have checked the phoney contract more Caerphilly.
Dene Mullen
Departure of the year: Mark Schneider leaves Nestlé
Nestlé CEO Mark Schneider paid the price for an under-par year at the world’s largest food group, as lower pricing and weak consumer demand hammered growth at the Swiss giant.
His shock departure in August followed a downgrading of already disappointing growth forecasts for the year – from 4% to “around 2%”. That guides towards the lowest growth at Nestlé for seven years and the brand’s shares tanked as a result.
While some wounds at the group were self-inflicted, such as a bungled IT upgrade at the health science business and a water purification scandal in France, it’s not a good time to be a global fmcg CEO – as the previously departed leaders of Unilever and Danone can attest.
Laurent Freixe, a 40-year company veteran, has been handed the reins to change course. He’ll be hoping the horses haven’t already well and truly bolted.
Alec Mattinson
Surprise of the year: Aldi’s sales slowdown
Aldi couldn’t go gangbusters forever. Of course, it was foreseeable that the discounter’s sales growth would slow as the cost-of-living crisis eased, but few predicted it would stall altogether.
In 10 months, Aldi went from being the fastest-growing supermarket to the third slowest, as year-on-year sales growth shrank from 17.1% to 0.3% [Kantar 12 w/e 3 September 2023 and 12 w/e 7 July 2024].
Because Aldi opened 20-30 stores in that same timeframe, its like-for-likes would have looked even worse.
But it’s not the only discounter to have suffered in 2024. Poundland’s like-for-like sales have been consistently down, as were B&M’s in its first half to 28 September.
Perhaps the real twist has been Lidl proving it’s not inevitable, by remaining the fastest-growing bricks-and-mortar supermarket for 15 months on the trot [Kantar 12 w/e 3 November 2024], as shoppers flock to its loyalty scheme and in-store bakeries.
Steve Farrell
Exit of the year: Unilever finally pulling out of Russia
After more than a year of head-buried-in-sand, optics-be-damned operations – and after facing relentless calls from campaigners and consumers alike – Dove- and Magnum-maker Unilever finally exited the Russian market in October.
The FTSE 100 giant faced fierce criticism for failing to pull out of Russia after it invaded Ukraine in early 2022 – mainly because many found its claim to only sell ‘essential products’ there (like baby food) bogus.
Not unfairly, perhaps, considering it was also selling ice cream to Russian customers the entire time.
Unilever argued it was a complex situation, as it didn’t want its assets raided by the Kremlin. This year, however, it finally rid itself of them in a deal that saw it sell its local subsidiary to Arnest Group, a Russian manufacturer of perfume and cosmetics.
Maria Gonçalves
Gone but not forgotten award: Andrews Original Salts
Shoppers often become emotionally attached to fmcg brands, but few would have predicted that some would be willing to fork out more than £70 a time to get their hands on discontinued Andrews Original Salts earlier this year.
Also known as Andrews Liver Salts, the remedy for upset stomachs disappeared from supermarket shelves in late 2023 after it was “no longer possible to continue production”, according to a spokeswoman.
Fans took to X to complain, presumably while forcing themselves to belch frequently to recreate those rosy Andrews memories.
Meanwhile, entrepreneurial shoppers seized the opportunity, flogging 150g tubs on eBay for as much as £73.35 – more than 14 times their previous shelf price of £5 in Tesco and Morrisons.
Niamh Leonard-Bedwell
Deal of the year: Mars/Kellanova
The global food mega-merger returned with a bang in August, with Mars’ $36bn takeover of Kellogg’s spin-out Kellanova a signpost that the industry’s behemoths are starting to put their huge balance sheets to work.
The bumper snacking deal, which saw privately owned Mars snap up brands like Pringles and Cheez-It, marked the largest food and drink deal since the €45bn merger of Kraft Foods and Heinz in 2015.
And it was not just the size of the deal that raised eyebrows, given the hefty 44% premium on Kellanova’s pre-deal share price and huge earnings multiple. It was also a vote of confidence in the future of global snacking, despite regulatory and consumer concerns over high-sugar treats and the potential impact of weight loss drugs.
The size of the deal and price paid – particularly on the back of Carlsberg’s £3.3bn swoop for Britvic – raised expectations that food and drink M&A could finally be emerging from its long hiatus. Will the fmcg giants find it’s a case of once one deal pops they just can’t stop?
Alec Mattinson
PR stunt of the year: Old Jamaica
Old Jamaica prompted despair in September when it announced it was to sunset its cult ginger beer.
A video on social media showed an Old Jamaica shelf-stacker revealing the brand was to be retired, while an accompanying OOH campaign called on shoppers to “enjoy it before it’s gone”.
Luckily, fans of the drink kept a sense of perspective. “I have nothing left to live for,” wailed one. “You can’t take my ginger beer away from me, please!” begged another.
But, in a move straight out of the Heinz Salad Cream playbook, it turned out the campaign was just a big old marketing stunt to generate buzz ahead of a forthcoming rebrand for Old Jamaica in 2025.
Admit it, they had you going for a minute.
James Beeson
Car crash of the year: Exports plummeting to lowest levels ever
It’s been a slow crash, but a crash nonetheless. With Brexit continuing to wield its catastrophic axe this year, it was perhaps unsurprising that UK food and drink exports in Q1 dropped to their lowest levels on record (barring an “exceptional” period at the height of the pandemic in 2021), according to the FDF.
Exports to the EU – where more than half of British food and drink is headed – saw the biggest drop, as the fall continued into H1 2024. Volumes to the EU sunk by nearly a quarter, driven by big declines across key markets such as Ireland, Spain, and the Netherlands. This prompted industry calls for less post-Brexit bureaucracy and stronger UK-EU trade relations.
The new government claims it’s making this a priority (along with all the other priorities, presumably). Gareth Thomas, minister for services, small businesses and exports, recently said officials were “preparing the way” to reset relations with the EU, which could see trade restrictions for businesses eased next year. Here’s hoping…
Maria Gonçalves
Spat of the year: Tony’s Chocolonely v Lidl
It’s another copycat row! This is not the first time one of the discounters has been accused of copying, but – by offering cash-strapped shoppers budget-friendly versions of big brands – Aldi and Lidl have always been able to defend themselves morally (if not legally). Until now.
By adopting Tony’s Chocolonely’s irregularly-shaped chocolate sections in September, Lidl wasn’t luring consumers away from an unrelatable and overpriced fmcg giant. Instead, it was copying a brand with an ethical raison d’être.
All Tony’s had to do to make its point was publicly ask why Lidl hadn’t also adopted its ethical sourcing principles.
Lidl answered by wheeling out its own long list of robust ethical sourcing principles for its Way to Go, Fairtrade-certified, chocolate bar. But it could have avoided the whole row in the first place by going just one step further and coming up with its own design.
The optics weren’t improved for Lidl when Aldi brought back its own Tony’s-endorsed bar a week later…
Steve Farrell
Celebrity tie-up of the year: Ottolenghi x Waitrose
Sorry Beyoncé, you didn’t make the cut this time.
There was much anticipation when Waitrose announced in April that it was joining forces with British-Israeli chef Yotam Ottolenghi.
It was Waitrose’s first major celeb tie-up since it cut ties with Heston Blumenthal last year, while for Ottolenghi, it was an opportunity to bring his products, and recipes, to the masses.
The excitement was justified. Waitrose completely sold out of some lines after “unprecedented” early demand. To capitalise on its popularity, Waitrose extended the range in October, adding three new sauces.
Keen to offer more of the promised “culinary adventure” that Waitrose’s foodie shoppers crave, the new lines include a pilpelchuma paste, which Ottolenghi described as “the next harissa”.
Stephen Jones
Come back tomorrow as we continue to chart 2024’s winners, losers and everything in between.
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