South Africa ran out of Marmite because the government banned alcohol.

Yes, that is a real sentence. Between March 2020 and July 2021, four separate alcohol bans shut down breweries for a combined 166 days. Marmite is made from spent brewer’s yeast, a byproduct of beer production. You cannot manufacture it, stockpile it, or order more of it. It exists when beer is being brewed, and it vanishes when beer stops.

The whole thing lasted over two years. And the alcohol ban was only the beginning.

Why Did South Africa Run Out of Marmite?

South Africa’s Marmite shortage began when COVID-19 alcohol bans shut down breweries in 2020, cutting off the supply of spent brewer’s yeast needed to make the spread. The shortage deepened through a global soda ash crisis, Johannesburg water cuts, and flood damage to a key brewery in KwaZulu-Natal. Production took over two years to recover.

Four Alcohol Bans in Sixteen Months

The South African government imposed four separate alcohol sales bans between March 2020 and July 2021, intended to free up hospital capacity during COVID-19 waves.

The dates:

  • Ban 1: 27 March to 1 June 2020 (66 days)
  • Ban 2: 13 July to 17 August 2020 (35 days)
  • Ban 3: 29 December 2020 to 1 February 2021 (34 days)
  • Ban 4: 28 June to 25 July 2021 (27 days)

The first ban alone wiped out 12 full trading weeks, roughly 30% of SAB’s annual production. Across all four bans, the alcohol industry reported R21.8 billion in lost revenue. More than 165,000 jobs disappeared from the value chain. Thirty percent of breweries closed permanently.

The government lost close to R60 billion in excise duty and VAT collections.

Where Marmite Fits

None of this had anything to do with Marmite. Marmite was collateral.

South Africa’s Marmite factory, operated by Pioneer Foods (a PepsiCo subsidiary) in Germiston, Johannesburg, sourced its wet yeast from SAB’s Alrode and Chamdor breweries, with a newer supply line from the Prospecton facility in Durban. Yeast is a live product. When brewing stops, the yeast dies. There is no freezer, no warehouse, no buffer stock. The supply either flows or it does not.

When the first ban hit in March 2020, the yeast stopped flowing. Production of Bovril, which uses significantly less yeast, was prioritised. Marmite was paused entirely. The 250g jars disappeared from shelves within weeks.

After the first ban was lifted on 1 June 2020, it took SAB’s breweries roughly two weeks to accumulate enough spent yeast to restart deliveries. That gap alone meant Marmite production lagged behind demand for months.

Then the second ban hit six weeks later.

When Marmite’s Only Factory Ran Out of Everything

The yeast shortage was not the only problem. It was the first domino.

Soda Ash

A global shortage of soda ash (sodium carbonate) hit during 2021. Soda ash is used in glass manufacturing. Marmite jars are glass. Without jars, even a restored yeast supply could not reach consumers. The glass packaging industry was already under pressure: the legal alcohol sector accounts for 85% of South Africa’s glass packaging demand, and that industry lost R1.5 billion during the first alcohol ban alone.

Pioneer Foods confirmed in early 2022 that “procuring consistent yeast supply at the right quality remains challenging and expected to persist this year.” But the soda ash shortage was a second, parallel bottleneck.

Water

The City of Johannesburg intermittently cut water supply to the Germiston area where Pioneer Foods operates. Marmite production requires water. The cuts added another source of unpredictable downtime to a factory that was already struggling to keep up.

The Floods

In April 2022, catastrophic floods swept through KwaZulu-Natal. SAB’s Prospecton brewery in Durban, one of the yeast suppliers to Pioneer Foods, was directly hit. Water rose 1.6 metres inside the plant. Production halted completely for three weeks. When it resumed, the brewery ran at 30% capacity for weeks after that.

The flood damage cost SAB as much as R700 million. The brewery’s planned R650 million expansion was delayed.

So the timeline looked like this: the yeast supply had finally stabilised after the fourth alcohol ban was lifted in July 2021. Then the jars ran short. Then the water cut out. Then the brewery that was sending the yeast was underwater.

Marmite started reappearing on shelves around May 2022. Supply was still patchy months after that. The shortage, measured from mid-2020 to late 2022, lasted roughly 26 months. The Economist’s Johannesburg correspondent described it as “the worst shortages of the yeasty toast topping since the end of apartheid.”

This Was Not Only a South African Problem

The dependency between beer and Marmite is not unique to South Africa.

In the UK, Marmite production relies on spent yeast from Carlsberg’s Northampton brewery, which sends 87% of its surplus yeast to the Marmite factory. When British pubs closed during COVID-19 lockdowns, Carlsberg’s yeast output dropped. The brewery responded by increasing its Marmite-bound yeast by 46% in March 2020, 79% in April, and 112% in May, but only because overall beer production had shifted from keg (pub) to can and bottle (retail). The yeast volume was partly salvageable. In South Africa, where all alcohol production was banned outright, there was no yeast to redirect.

Heineken also supplies brewer’s yeast to the global Marmite and Vegemite supply chains. The same fragility exists in every market where the product is sold.

The difference in South Africa was the length and severity of the disruption. Four outright production bans, not partial lockdowns. And when the bans ended, three more problems arrived in sequence. No other market experienced this stacking of failures.

The Ownership Shuffle

There is a quiet footnote to this story.

Marmite was originally produced by Pioneer Foods, one of South Africa’s largest food companies. PepsiCo acquired Pioneer Foods in March 2020 for approximately R24 billion, just as the first alcohol ban was being imposed. PepsiCo inherited the Marmite shortage as part of the deal.

In July 2024, PepsiCo announced it was selling its Marmite, Bovril, and savoury food ingredients business to Anchor Yeast, the South African affiliate of Lallemand Inc, a Canadian family-owned yeast specialist. The transaction was expected to close in Q4 2024, subject to Competition Commission approval.

The new owner’s core business is yeast. Lallemand has, in its CEO Antoine Chagnon’s words, “significant experience producing yeast, yeast derivatives and yeast-based food ingredients.” Whether a yeast company can manage the brewer’s yeast dependency better than a snacks conglomerate is an open question. But the move makes structural sense: bringing the product closer to its critical input.

What Hidden Dependencies Look Like

The Marmite shortage is a textbook case of a hidden supply chain dependency. The product depends on a raw material that only exists as waste from an entirely separate industry. There is no alternative source. There is no buffer. The dependency is invisible until it breaks.

Every supply chain has at least one of these. A pharmaceutical that depends on a specific chemical solvent produced as a byproduct of petroleum refining. A construction material that requires a mineral extracted as tailings from a different mining process. An electronics component that depends on a gas produced in only three factories worldwide.

The pattern is always the same. The dependent product sits in a completely different industry from its critical input. The people managing the supply chain of product A have no visibility into the economics, regulation, or disruption risk of industry B. When industry B has a bad day, product A disappears.

What makes the Marmite case remarkable is the cascade. It was not one disruption. It was five, arriving in sequence across 26 months, each one hitting a different input: yeast, then jars, then water, then the physical brewery. The chances of all five lining up are low. But that is how tail risks compound. Each disruption prevented recovery from the previous one.

For anyone managing a supply chain, the question is not whether you have a dependency like this. You do. The question is whether you have mapped it before it breaks.

Sources

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  3. Daily Maverick. “Missing Marmite: The Soda Ash Edition.” 4 March 2022. dailymaverick.co.za
  4. BusinessTech. “Marmite is finally back on South African shelves.” May 2022. businesstech.co.za
  5. News24. “KZN flood-related property damage could cost SA Breweries as much as R700 million.” 11 May 2022. news24.com
  6. SAB. “The mounting consequence of three alcohol bans.” sab.co.za
  7. Moneyweb. “PepsiCo SA’s Marmite and Bovril find new home with Anchor Yeast.” 29 July 2024. moneyweb.co.za
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  9. The World from PRX. “Why the booze ban led to a marmite shortage in South Africa.” 4 April 2024. theworld.org
  10. USDA Foreign Agricultural Service. “South Africa: Widespread Relief as South Africa Lifts Alcohol Ban.” fas.usda.gov
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