Spreads & jams 2024: demand for ‘natural’ nut butters rises

In early September, an X user with the handle @gordthekraken posted: “My poor colleagues have to suffer me being miserable.” The reason for that misery: his beloved Marmite Peanut Butter was missing from local supermarkets. His mood likely got worse when Unilever confirmed a couple of days later that it had retired the savoury spread.

Launched to much fanfare in 2019, Marmite Peanut Butter was a combination of nut butter and yeast extract that would “appeal to both Marmite fans and peanut butter lovers”, its owner promised. That apparently wasn’t the case, as the product’s value was just £1.6m at the time of @gordthekraken’s X post.

Marmite’s misfortune is emblematic of the shift in nut butters, where more natural options are gaining traction, says ManiLife founder Stu Macdonald. “When people used to open jars and see oil on the top, it would be a bit weird. However, the mass market is starting to see unstabilised peanut butter as a good thing.”

This shift is playing into the hands of less processed brands like ManiLife, Meridian and Pip & Nut, which have added a combined £8.8m and seen an extra 884.3 thousand kilos go through tills.

They’re already preparing for further growth. ManiLife is investing more than £1m to open its own factory in Derbyshire, while Pip & Nut this year appointed industry veterans Giles Brook and Tim Lee as chairman and non-executive director respectively.

At the same time, processed players Whole Earth and Sun-Pat, both of which use palm oil as a stabiliser, have sold 1.1 million fewer kilos and shed £5.1m in total.

There are definitely “shifting consumer preferences towards healthier, organic” spreads, confirms Karl Ruggiero, NIQ client manager. That goes some way to explain the 2.9% volume decline across sugary jams & preserves – and the double-digit declines for Hartley’s, Robertson’s and Tiptree.

Reduced sugar challenger Fearne & Rosie, on the other hand, is soaring. Its volumes are up 38%, after it secured an Asda listing in April followed by Co-op in June. The brand’s founder, Rachel Kettlewell, points to “a macro change of people seeking clean, nutritional labels”.

Honey has enjoyed very different drivers of sales: the on-going home-baking trend, a pivot to cleaner label sweeteners, and the craze for spicy variants such as Hilltop’s February NPD (see Top Launch, below). Volume sales are up 8.6%, contributing to a 4.6% value gain. Eight of the top 10 brands have shifted more kilos.

Read more: Spreads & jams 2023: Pip & Nut is star spreads & jams brand