Sector bounces back as consumers focus on provenance and healthy eating, but is still well behind Europe
Consumers searching for healthy food from trusted sources have fuelled the UK organic market’s biggest boom in two decades, according to vegetable box seller Riverford.
The delivery business, which sells meat, cheese, cookbooks and recipe boxes alongside vegetables, recorded a 6% increase in sales to £117m in the year to May 2025, as the UK organic food and drink market grew by almost 9% in that year, according to new figures from the Soil Association. The strong growth, significantly outpacing the wider food market, helped the employee-owned business give a £1.1m bonus to workers.
Rob Haward, the chief executive of the Devon-based company which delivers about 70,000 boxes a week, said the company had gained new customers and existing clients had spent more. “We haven’t seen the market grow as much as this for 20 years,” he said.
Haward said the rapid market growth in 2024 had continued last year amid greater awareness of healthy diets and “increased concerns about where you can go to get food you can trust”. It represents a bounceback for the sector, which has had a difficult period since the credit crunch and slowed during the pandemic.
