Brewer’s yeast, a Burton factory and a French pot.

Marmite was born in a brewing town. English Wikipedia, citing the BBC, credits the German chemist Justus von Liebig with the 19th-century discovery that brewer’s yeast could be concentrated and eaten, but says early attempts to sell such an extract made little headway. That changed in 1902, when the Marmite Food Extract Company was formed in Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire, with Marmite as its main product and Burton as the site of its first factory. The spent yeast was supplied by the Bass brewery.

It was not a simple transfer of a Continental idea. Wikipedia, drawing on an early company history, says the first makers found that yeast from British beer did not respond to the treatment used on Continental yeast, which came from different fermentation methods, so new machinery and processes had to be developed before a satisfactory extract reached the shops. The product sold well enough that by 1907 a second factory was built at Camberwell Green in south London.

Unilever, which owns the brand today, tells the same story more briefly. “In 1902 the Marmite Food Company opened a small factory in Burton-on-Trent, where Marmite is still made to this day,” its British website says. The company also says Marmite went into soldiers’ ration packs in the First World War and was sent to British peacekeeping forces in Kosovo in 1999.

The name and the jar belong together. The picture on the label shows a marmite, the French word for a large covered cooking pot of earthenware or metal, and Marmite is still sold in a distinctive bulbous jar. It was first sold in earthenware pots; since the 1920s it has come in glass, and English Wikipedia, citing the broadcaster Ben Fogle’s book English, says the jars are supplied by the German glassmaker Gerresheimer.

From “My mate” to “Love it or hate it.”

Marmite’s advertising has changed tone more than its jar. English Wikipedia says its first major campaign, in the 1930s, used characters whose faces were built out of the word “good,” and that early slogans included “The growing up spread you never grow out of.” In the 1980s television commercials showed an army platoon chanting “My mate, Marmite,” for years set to the tune of “Low Rider,” the 1975 song by the American funk band War.

The line that defines the brand came in October 1996. It was written at the London agency BMP DDB by the creative team Richard Flintham and Andy McLeod, and, as Creative Review told it, it grew from the fact that Flintham loved the spread and McLeod hated it. McLeod recalled the moment in a 2021 interview with 1843, The Economist’s magazine. The comparison was not wholly new: the etymology site Word Histories found a local newspaper, the Bracknell Times, likening something to the taste of Marmite — “you either love or loathe” — in December 1973. But the campaign fixed “Love it or hate it” to the brand, and “Marmite” became shorthand in Britain for anything that divides opinion. Marketing Week has called it one of the longest-running slogans in advertising. In 2013, Unilever says, a campaign against “Marmite neglect” built on the same idea, urging lovers to rescue forgotten jars from the back of the cupboard.

The jar has also been a canvas for limited editions. A Guinness Marmite, made with 30% Guinness yeast, ran to 300,000 jars in February 2007. A Champagne Marmite for Valentine’s Day in January 2008 had a heart-shaped label with “I love you” in place of the logo. Marmite XO, matured four times longer than usual, launched in March 2010 with a black cap and a black-and-gold label, The Guardian reported, and returned in July 2019 with an off-white cap. For the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in April 2012 the spread became “Ma’amite,” with a label coloured after the Union Flag, a gold crown in place of the pot-and-spoon emblem and a red rather than yellow cap, in a run of 300,000 jars.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group all make sauces, pickle, gravy or savoury spreads, and all of them come from Britain or Australia: HP Sauce, Lea & Perrins, Branston, Bisto, Marmite, Bovril and Vegemite. British and Australian pantry brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from names that still carry a founder’s surname to names that now belong to much larger food groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a supermarket shelf.

A sauce or spread brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single recipe than by a bottle, a jar, a name and the meal it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its factory or grown far beyond the town where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its jars and bottles are actually filled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Bovril, three conglomerates and a pending merger.

Marmite spent most of the 20th century beside a rival British jar. By 1990 Marmite Limited had become a subsidiary of Bovril Limited, English Wikipedia says, so it followed Bovril through a run of corporate owners: James Goldsmith’s Cavenham Foods, which took over Bovril in 1971, and then Beecham, which bought Bovril in 1980, according to Grace’s Guide, the British industrial-history reference. In 1990 Marmite Limited was bought by CPC International, the American owner of Hellmann’s, which renamed itself Best Foods in 1998; Best Foods merged with Unilever in 2000, and Marmite has been a Unilever brand since.

Marmite is still made in Burton. In April 2026 the local news site Daily Focus reported that Unilever’s Burton factory makes Marmite, Bovril, Colman’s and Hellmann’s, after a £40 million modernisation, completed in November 2024, gathered Unilever’s British condiments production on the site; the town’s MP, Jacob Collier, noted that Marmite had been made in Burton since 1902.

The brand’s next owner is already named. On 31 March 2026 Unilever and the American spice company McCormick agreed to combine Unilever’s foods business with McCormick in a deal valued at about $45 billion, and City AM named Marmite and Bovril among the brands involved. Unilever and its shareholders are to own 65% of the combined company. The companies expect the deal to close by mid-2027; in September 2026 Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority opened a first-phase review, FoodNavigator reported. Until it closes, Marmite remains with Unilever.

The name travels unevenly. A separate Marmite has been made in New Zealand under licence since 1919 to a different recipe, English Wikipedia says, and the name of Australia’s Vegemite, created in the early 1920s, derives from Marmite’s.

For a design guide, Marmite shows how a pot-shaped jar and a slogan that admits half the country dislikes the product can carry a brand for more than a century. Compare Bovril, its long-time stablemate in Burton, and Vegemite, the Australian yeast spread. For this guide we use yeast black, lid yellow and label red with a heavy slab serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Marmite’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.