The brand, owned by Unilever Bestfoods UK, a subsidiary of Anglo-Dutch food giant Unilever, has seen sales chipped away in recent years due to consumer concerns at home sparked off by mad cow disease, and export restrictions overseas.
"Many people have fond memories of drinking hot Bovril on cold winters evenings but haven't been buying the product because, rightly or wrongly, they are concerned about eating beef extract," a spokesperson for Unilever Bestfoods explained to FoodNavigator.com.
Sales of Bovril, mixed with hot water to make a warm drink or added to soups and stews and also a spread, have dropped by 1 to 2 per cent per year over the last four years in Britain, but they have also been knocked overseas as a result of import restrictions on British beef products imposed by some countries because of mad cow disease. The beef in Bovril is not British.
"In terms of export, key target markets are Malaysia, China and Singapore,where the brand has traditionally been sold but where we have beenprecluded from continuing to sell it because of the meat content," said the Unilever spokesperson.
In the early 1990s BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy), a transmissible, neurodegenerative, brain disease of cattle, ravaged the UK beef industry - from which it is only now starting to recover. A European Association of Animal Production report estimates the cost of BSE to the EU member states at more than €90 billion.
BSE was a factor in the sales decline of Bovril experienced in the 1990s, so replacing the beef extract with a yeast mix (45 per cent yeast extract in the new formulation) and consequently building a vegetarian profile for the brand will make for easier market access in certain export markets.
"Exports that used to account for 20 per cent of sales have dropped to 7 per cent," said Unilever Bestfoods UK.
Asia is identified as a potential export market. In Malaysia the product is used in porridge and coffee, but the government is becoming quite restrictive on non-halal meat. The new Bovril formulation, rolled out in July this year, will overcome this concern.
Yeast extract is obtained from the yeast cells of Saccharomyces cerevisiae formed in the brewing of beer.
Unilever Bestfoods UK currently supplies about 15,000 tonnes of Bovril annually.