Using their loaf? Shoppers are ditching sliced bread for healthier breakfasts

Toast and jam, bacon sandwiches and boiled egg with dippers may be at the heart of traditional British culture but bread is making up an ever thinner slice of our diet - putting pressure on some famous brands.

- Sarah Butler

While still one of the most ubiquitous items in shopping baskets, the popularity of the packaged sliced loaf has been sliding downhill since the Hovis lad puffed up a cobbled street with his bicycle to the strains of a brass band in the famous 1973 television ad.

Now Hovis's owner, Endless, is in talks with the owner of its rival Kingsmill, Associated British Foods (ABF), about a possible merger of the bakery businesses, which together account for just under a quarter of the packaged bread market. Both have struggled to get out of the red for several years.

ABF's chief executive, George Weston, was saying back in 2017 that its bakery division was "making an unsustainable level of loss" as it faced commodity price inflation, even before the full invasion of Ukraine and accelerating climate crisis supercharged the price of wheat.

As one bakery world insider puts it: "The packaged bread industry is in inexorable decline. An industry solution is needed."

Rising costs - from energy and transport to wheat and labour - have combined with pressure on sales as packaged bread faces rising competition from a huge range of alternatives.