UK Supplement Trends — July 2025: the market cools

Part of The Formulation Index, Supplement Factory’s monthly read on what UK brands are actually briefing us to make.

After June’s mineral surge, July was the month the market caught its breath. Almost every leading active eased back, a broad and orderly cooling rather than any dramatic fall. Magnesium held the top spot at 45%, down six points, with Zinc and Vitamin B6 level-pegging at 29%.

When the whole board drifts down together like this, it usually reflects the seasonal mix of briefs rather than any loss of appetite for a particular ingredient. The more interesting signals in a cooling month are the actives that rise anyway.

Ingredient in focus: Creatine

Against the tide, Creatine climbed to 15% of all quotes, one of its strongest months to that point. Creatine’s rise is one of the defining stories of the year, and July was an early marker of it. Long boxed in as a bodybuilding ingredient, it has broken into everyday wellness on the back of research and public interest in its cognitive and healthy-ageing benefits, particularly for women and older consumers. When an active gains ground in a month where most are slipping, it is showing real momentum, and Creatine was doing exactly that.

What else moved

The functional actives generally held firm while the base softened. Green Tea Extract rose to 17% and L-Theanine to 13%, the calm-and-focus pairing that would become a running theme. The vitamins and minerals cooled; the actives with a specific benefit story did not.

What it means for brands

July is a lesson in reading a soft month correctly. A broad cooling is mostly noise, the natural ebb of a seasonal quoting mix. The signal is in the exceptions. If you want to spot a genuine trend early, watch the actives that rise while the market falls, because that is momentum you can trust. In July 2025, Creatine was quietly telling you where a chunk of the next year’s demand was heading.

The lull did not last. In August, the market would produce one of the most extreme readings of the entire year.

The Formulation Index is built from Supplement Factory’s own formulation quotes, actives only, each ingredient counted once per quote. Explore the live Index →