News24 | RIP ProNutro: PepsiCo pulls the plug after 64 years

• PepsiCo is discontinuing ProNutro in South Africa, 64 years after it was launched.
• This comes five months after the group faced backlash for its “new generation” ProNutro that consumers rejected.
• PepsiCo says, despite its best efforts, it could not recreate the original taste and texture with new technology.
• For more financial news, visit News24 Business.

It’s gone! ProNutro, the cereal generations of South Africans breakfasted on, won’t be returning to the shelves in any form.

“After a long review process, PepsiCo has made the difficult decision to discontinue ProNutro in South Africa,” the company said in a statement on Wednesday.

That decision comes five months after PepsiCo replaced the original ProNutro with a “new generation” version made using a totally different manufacturing process.

Bokomo called it “The Original, Pushed Further”, but it pushed many of the brand’s devotees away.

The only warning consumers got was a banner at the top of the box which read: “New Generation ProNutro taste and texture”.

Social media backlash

On social media, consumers complained about its strange taste, lumpy texture and a “chemical” smell when opening the packet. Many took issue with the new instructions to “whisk” the cereal after adding milk.

READ | Wendy Knowler | ‘It tastes weird’: New generation ProNutro is not going down well

In April, PepsiCo told News24 that “substantive national consumer testing” had been done with more than 300 consumers in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape.

Half of them were ProNutro consumers. The other half were “non-ProNutro ready-to-eat cereal users”, included to ensure “that a new consumer base was represented”.

Amazingly, no children were among the tasters. PepsiCo said it chose not to test directly with children, relying instead on “adult proxies, caregiver insights, and rigorous internal standards”.

READ | Wendy Knowler | A ‘sorry’ after the disastrous ProNutro fail

Later that month, PepsiCo apologised to consumers on social media: “Mzansi, we’re sorry. We’ve heard you and while we can’t bring the old ProNutro back, we are finding ways to improve it.”

It said it would work on the new version’s “mixability” and keep consumers updated.

‘Subsidised’

Now, five months on, the company says while mixability could be improved, “we were not able to recreate the taste and texture consumers associated with the original ProNutro using the new generation production process”.

The original product – a blend of cooked maize, soya, peanuts and skimmed milk – was roller-dried: slathered onto a scalding, spinning drum, then scraped off as a crisp, dry film.

The roller-drum process was developed in the 1960s, “at a time when water and electricity were more readily available and affordable than they are today”, PepsiCo said.

The ageing equipment was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain, and consistent quality was a growing challenge.

New, more cost-efficient processes have not been able to replicate ProNutro’s distinctive characteristics.

Also, sales of ProNutro had been declining and PepsiCo “continued to subsidise the brand for many years”, it said.

PepsiCo says the production process “could not simply be transferred to another manufacturer or reproduced elsewhere in the same way”.

There was “no clear like-for-like replacement for the original line”, it added, and any major production investment would have pushed up the price substantially.

Earlier this year, PepsiCo told News24 that replacing the old machinery would add about R25 to the price of a 500g pack, a premium it doubted its customers would be willing to pay.

Any takers?

Companies have been known to bring back the original versions of iconic products in the face of mass public rejection. Unilever recently brought back its original Sunlight “green bar” soap after widespread condemnation of its reformulated version.

And Coca-Cola did an about-turn within three months after its New Coke bombed with consumers.

But PepsiCo says that was not an option for ProNutro. For one, the machinery that was used to make the original product has been scrapped.

“After carefully reviewing every available option, we could not return to the original way of making ProNutro in a manner that was reliable, affordable for consumers and environmentally responsible,” the company said.

Dare consumers hope that somehow another manufacturer will come to market with a version of the old ProNutro, similar to how Peck’s Anchovette made a comeback?

PepsiCo acquired Pioneer Foods in March 2020 in one of its biggest acquisitions outside the US. In the following year, the group killed Peck’s Anchovette for similar reasons to ProNutro, prompting howls of protest from ardent fish paste fans.

In response, Cape Gulf Brands and Premier Fishing acquired Peck’s Anchovette, partnering initially with Pick n Pay as their exclusive retail launch partner, though the iconic product has since expanded to major retailers nationwide.

So could another company bring ProNutro back? There is a chance, albeit a small one.

Nestlé and Purity still use the energy-intensive roller-drum drying process for their baby cereals – Cerelac and Purity Baby Cereal – because it produces a light, non-sticky texture that babies can swallow safely.

But they can sell the baby cereals at a premium price – about double what the original ProNutro sold for until about six months ago.

The history

ProNutro was launched commercially in 1962 by Durban company Hind Brothers & Co. The world’s first nutraceutical cereal was the result of years of research by Dr Francis Fox of the South African Institute for Medical Research, who worked with Dr Willem Odendaal, among others, on a high-protein food to combat malnutrition.

Mr ProNutro calls it ‘insane’

Johannesburg-based food scientist Nigel Sunley, who was involved with ProNutro from 1981 and was tasked with its research and development when he joined National Brands, calls the decision to kill ProNutro “insane”.

When National Brands sold its cereals business to Bokomo in 1997, Sunley was part of the deal, and became factory manager of the ProNutro plant in Wadeville on the East Rand.

Along the way, he earned the nickname “Mr ProNutro”.

He started his own consultancy in 2007 but was called in to consult on technical issues several times after that.

Manufacturing ProNutro was a somewhat antiquated process - very energy-intensive, but it made the right product.

Nigel Sunley, former ProNutro factory manager

Sunley’s team experimented with making ProNutro on cooker-extruders, the technology he believes is behind the “new generation” version, in the 1980s and 1990s. He says they managed to produce a palatable product that kept its nutritional quality, but they couldn’t match the original flavour and texture.

Plenty of nutrient-dense products are made on extruders, Sunley says, but “when the benchmark is the original ProNutro, it’s quite tough”.

He believes it was commercial madness to scrap the machinery. “It seems they did not understand people’s passion for the product.”

In his view, ProNutro’s diehard devotees would have been prepared to pay a premium for the original as a niche product.

Asked whether he had anticipated that PepsiCo would kill the brand altogether, Sunley said: “I suppose it was right at the back of my mind. But I didn’t think they would be so stupid.”

One month left to eat it

If you managed to stockpile the original ProNutro when it began disappearing from shelves, be aware that the last-ever batch of the original reaches its best-before date next month.

And while many shelf-stable foods can safely be eaten for some time after that date, that doesn’t apply to ProNutro, says Sunley.

“The soya flour in the product has an unstable oil content, so it starts going rancid from the 12-month mark.”

Consumers with questions can contact PepsiCo’s Consumer Care Centre on 0800 212 360 or talktous.sa@pepsico.com.