Tesco removes Marmite and other essentials from shelves over Unilever Brexit row

Life may be about to get a lot less tasty

Tesco removes Marmite and other essentials from shelves over Unilever Brexit row

Brexit means Brexit, as Theresa May has repeatedly reminded us in recent weeks.

What else it means remains a mystery - although we were all promised £350 million extra for the NHS a week, so that's definitely going to happen, right?

One thing we didn't see coming was this, on the Tesco website:

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Yes, everyone's favourite yeasty treat has been taken off the website of the UK's biggest retailer. What's going on?

Well, it turns out that global mega-company Unilever is having a bit of a ruck with Tesco. As you'll have noticed if you went on holiday anywhere other than Hull this Summer, the pound in your pocket is worth a wallop less than it used to be - 17% to be precise. Not only has it made sangria that bit more expensive, it's eaten into the bottom lines of companies that do business both in the UK and elswhere - like Unilever, or almost any other business bigger than a lemonade stand.

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Unilever have responded by trying to increase their prices, which Tesco - and reportedly other retailers - didn't take too kindly to at all. They've gone the extra mile, though, removing Unilever products from the website, and refusing to restock them in their supermarkets until a resolution is found. In the usually fairly placid world of retail, this is essentially a declaration of war.

Apparently, these pricing disputes are fairly routine, but seldom this public. Whether or not this can be resolved quickly, we can't say, but if we were you, we'd get ready for some black market Marmite trading. 

So what do we stand to lose if this isn't sorted out, and other chains follow suit? Here's a list of the 41 items Unilever produce, that Tesco have binned for now:

Bertolli

Comfort

Domestos

Dove

Flora

Hellman's mayonnaise

Knorr

Lipton's

Lynx

Magnum ice cream

Persil

Sure

Surf

Ben & Jerry's

Brut

Carte D'Or

Cif

Cornetto

I Can't Believe It's Not Butter

Impulse

Marmite

Maille mustard

Pond's

Radox

Simple

Solero

St Ives

Stork

TreSemme

Timotei

VO5

Vaseline

Viennetta

Wall's

Bovril

Colman's

Elmlea

HB ice cream

Lyon's

PG Tips

Pot Noodles

So, we'll smell, have greasy hair, not have any mustard or ice cream or TEA, and students will be deprived of the crucial nourishment of pot noodles.

But at least we took back control, right?

Marc Chacksfield
Content Director

As Content Director of Shortlist, Marc likes nothing more than to compile endless lists of an evening by candlelight. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.