Butter sales bounce back strongly in UK

The strong endorsement of butter in British TV cookery shows has been cited recently as a factor driving growing demand for one of Ireland’s leading dairy exports. For example, well-known British chef Marco Pierre White offered a passionate endorsement of the merits of butter recently.

“Butter!” he exclaimed. “That’s the secret. Lots and lots of butter. It makes a baked potato an event, a steak an occasion and transforms toast into something luxurious. Whatever you do in life – add butter.”

The latest data from the UK suggest that consumers are following this advice. Kantar data show that spreadable butter is the big winner, with the category up a whopping 8.4% in the 52 weeks to January 2015 compared with the same period 12 months previously.

The average price paid for butter and spreads in the UK was £3.32/kg, a 1.5% price increase after a number of years of decline.

Kantar reports that sales of spreads shrank by 6.4% in the same period. In an effort to stem falling sales, the market leader, Flora, has been launched in a new format containing butter.

Butter is benefiting from the trend towards natural products and the growing awareness that negative health claims around the product were not based on reputable science.

In the US, the National Producers Federation reports that commercial use of milkfat in all products rose by 2.7% in the last quarter of 2014.

It noted that “the average milkfat content of many dairy products, including milk and cheese, has grown recently as negative messages about consuming milkfat have declined. This is keeping the supply-demand balance for total milkfat fairly tight.”