Love or hate it: Marmite becomes the symbol of Brexit’s impact

Toast with Marmite sits on a kitchen counter in Manchester. (Reuters)

LONDON: Philip Walker spreads Marmite on his daily crumpet and stockpiles jars of the yeast spread. He’s a fan, and he’s upset at plans to raise the price of this icon of the British breakfast table.
Love it or hate it, Marmite has become the most visible sign yet of Britain’s decision to leave the European Union after consumer giant Unilever sought to raise wholesale prices for its products by a reported 10 percent following a sharp drop in the pound.
Tesco, the UK’s biggest supermarket chain, has rejected the increase and removed many Unilever products from its website. #Marmitegate was not far behind.
“I am more angry at Unilever than I am at Tesco,” said Walker, a 43-year-old regional manager for St. John Ambulance.
“It seems Unilever is using Brexit as an excuse to hold Tesco customers to ransom.”
Unilever now says it has solved its pricing dispute with Tesco.
Unilever said in a statement that “the supply situation with Tesco in the UK and Ireland has now been successfully resolved.”
Since Britons voted June 23 to exit the EU after a bitter campaign in which opponents promised economic mayhem if the country chose to leave the 28-nation bloc.
But for the general consumer, the consequences of that decision are only now becoming apparent.
The pound is down more than 18 percent against the dollar and almost as much against the euro since June.
While for weeks the impact had been felt mainly by Britons spending abroad, the currency’s plunge is becoming a reality as the cost of imported goods spikes higher.
Unilever, which is based in the Netherlands and besides Marmite makes Dove soap, Ben & Jerry’s and Magnum ice cream and Persil laundry powder, is the first company whose efforts to pass these costs onto its customers have become public.
“This is the first warning sign of there being a real change,” said Patrick O’Brien, content director at Verdict.retail, who predicts a future with many spirited negotiations between retailers and suppliers. “Someone has to pay.”
That tension is exacerbated in the supermarket business, where there is already huge competition between chains over who has the lowest prices. Mainstream retailers like Tesco and Sainsbury’s are struggling to fend off discounters including Lidl and Aldi.
Supermarkets are essentially playing a game of chicken over who can hold off hiking their prices the longest. The upshot is that food prices have not yet jumped by as much as the pound’s plunge would suggest, though analysts say it’s only a matter of when.
Brexit has thrown a “huge wobble” into the equation, said Christopher Haskins, who built Northern Foods into a major supermarket supplier.
“Undoubtedly what Unilever is doing is justified in terms of the economics of it, but Tesco’s worried that Aldi may not follow suit,” said Haskins, who now sits in the House of Lords.
Shoppers searching Tesco’s website on Thursday for Unilever products were greeted with the same message: “Sorry, this product is currently not available.”
But it was Marmite, a distinctly British product, that seized the public imagination.
The spread, made from concentrated brewer’s yeast, has become entwined in the national psyche since it was first produced in Burton-on-Trent, England, in 1902. Unilever acquired the brand in 2000.
People could grasp the idea that this breakfast staple might suddenly become very expensive.
In a discussion that has centered on national growth rates, inflation and currency fluctuations, Marmite could be understood by all.
And the public noticed. The very entrepreneurial put their yellow and green jars of Marmite on eBay. One seller offered a used jar for 4 million pounds ($4.8 million), plus postage, with the description “But there’s still some left. Otherwise good condition.”
The matter even rose to the attention of Parliament. Pete Wishart, the Scottish National Party’s leader in the House of Commons, urged the government to reconsider its plans for a “full English Brexit.”
“Who would have thought that the first casualty of this hard Brexit would be the nation’s supplies of Marmite?” he said as lawmakers discussed the issue.
James Smith, a 31-year-old teacher from Liverpool, took a photo of the brown-stained Marmite tub in his refrigerator and said he was “very grateful” to have some on hand.