Bovril, the quintessential British winter warming drink, is going vegetarian in a bid to widen its appeal and boost sales, particularly in Asia, its makers said on Thursday.
Since it was first manufactured by a Scotsman in Canada to feed the French army more than 100 years ago, Bovril’s main ingredient has been beef extract.
But after exhaustive consumer tests, Unilever UK Foods said it will start using a savoury yeast mix instead.
”It was not an easy decision to make because we know people like the taste of beef,” a Unilever spokesperson said.
But he added: ”In blind taste tests we have conducted, 10% didn’t notice any difference in taste, 40% preferred the original — and 50% preferred the new product.”
He added: ”One of the areas where we think we can grow sales is in this export market, particularly in Asia where it is very popular.
”In Malaysia, they stir it into porridge and coffee, but the government there was becoming quite restrictive on non-halal meat.”
Sales of Bovril have been sliding since the 1990s when fears emerged that eating British beef could cause variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human form of mad cow disease.
Foreign sales, which used to account for 20% of the market, have slumped to just 7%, the Unilever spokesperson said.
Bovril was invented by Scotsman John Lawson Johnston after he won a contract to supply one million cans of beef to the French army.
In order to fill the order, he built a factory in the French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec in 1873, which eventually led to the launch of a product called Fluid Beef.
The name Bovril derived from a name Johnston found in a book.
Vril was ”an electric fluid” that according to the book ”cured diseases and established equilibrium of natural powers”, while the Latin word for beef is ”bos”.
In 1884, Johnston returned to London and set up a small factory in the British capital. Production moved to Burton on Trent, Staffordshire, in central England, in 1968. — Sapa-AFP