Speight's Brewery in Dunedin is looking forward to Marmite being back on supermarket shelves.
The brewer has had to find an alternative use for the brewer's yeast left over from its beer production process since Sanitarium's Christchurch factory was damaged by the recent spate of earthquakes.
"We would love to be giving them our yeast again," Lion Nathan external relations manager Jude Walter said this week.
"We've had a very long-term relationship with Sanitarium. Unfortunately, the earthquake did some horrific things up there and put their factory out of operation.
"Until the factory opens again, all our yeast is going out with the spare grain. We don't know the exact details, but we understand it is largely used as animal feed in and around the wider Dunedin area."
Speight's has supplied brewer's yeast to Sanitarium for the production of Marmite for more than 30 years.
A cardboard cut-out of a Marmite jar was part of the Speight's Brewery tour in Dunedin, until the Christchurch factory was closed in November.
Speight's uses about eight generations of yeast for each batch of beer and the surplus yeast not required at each step in the brewing process previously went to Sanitarium.
Marmite was only made in the Christchurch factory and the subsequent disappearance of the popular breakfast spread became known as "Marmageddon", as supplies dried up in New Zealand and Australia.
About 640,000kg of Marmite was produced every year, of which brewer's yeast accounted for 80% of the ingredients.
Sanitarium advised last month that Marmite would not reappear on New Zealand supermarket shelves until later this year, after engineers discovered further structural damage to the Christchurch factory.
"Unfortunately, this will impact [on] the greatly anticipated start-up of Marmite production. Our revised estimated start-up time frame for Marmite production is October," Sanitarium general manager Pierre van Heerden said in a statement.
"Like our consumers we are frustrated at the length of time this is taking, but the safety of our staff has to be our first priority. I know everyone is putting in a mighty effort to get Marmite back on-shelf as quickly as possible."
