The Formulation Index
UK Supplement Ingredient Trends: The Formulation Index
The Formulation Index is a monthly report on what UK supplement brands are actually briefing Supplement Factory to make. Each calendar month we publish the ingredients, formats and categories that appeared in our quotes, so you can see where demand is heading. Nothing is modelled, scraped or estimated.
The report below covers the latest closed month. The ticker at the base of every page is a separate, live view of the last rolling 30 days.
New to the Index? Read how it works, and why it is powerful for your next product →
The Formulation Index — August 2026
MONTH CLOSED
Share of the formulation quotes Supplement Factory raised in August 2026 that included each item. The month-on-month move compares against July 2026.
Most-quoted ingredients
New this month
Ingredients quoted in August that were not quoted in July.
Formats
Categories
Minerals
77%
▼ -10pp
Vitamins
76%
▼ -6pp
Amino Acids
61%
▲ +5pp
Botanicals
59%
▲ +3pp
Proteins
29%
▲ +2pp
Actives only. Fillers, sweeteners, flavours and packaging are excluded. Each ingredient is counted once per quote. Tiles ringed green or red are the month’s fastest movers. Every linked ingredient opens its page in our Ingredients A–Z library.
August 2026: the base cooled after July’s surge
August was a step back from a hot July. The classic vitamin-and-mineral base, which had surged across the board in July, gave up ground in almost every line. Magnesium held the top spot but slipped eight points to half of all quotes; Zinc eased six, Vitamin C eleven and Vitamin B6 eleven. When the whole base moves together like this it is the base itself being trimmed, not any single ingredient falling out of favour.
The category view says it plainly: Minerals down ten points and Vitamins down six were the heaviest declines of the month. But the demand did not disappear so much as rotate. Amino Acids rose five points as a category and Botanicals three, and at the ingredient level L-Theanine stood out, up eight points to more than a quarter of quotes. The pattern is a move out of the everyday multivitamin stack and toward functional actives with a specific benefit story.
Format reinforced it. Powder strengthened to more than half of everything quoted while capsules and stick packs both eased, which fits a month where the ingredients gaining ground, from theanine to green tea, suit a scoop-and-shake format. The month’s notable new entry was Electrolytes, quoted in nearly one in eleven formulations having been absent in July.
Set against July, when Magnesium, Zinc and the B-vitamins all surged double digits, August reads as a cooling and a rotation rather than a collapse. For a brand planning its next product, the practical signal is that a differentiated active is currently doing more work in a brief than another point of a standard multivitamin.
Monthly editions
The Index publishes one report per calendar month. August is featured above; the full archive, a year of UK formulation demand, is below.
August 2026
The base cooled
Top: Magnesium 50%. Broad decline; L-Theanine surged to a record 26%
June 2026
Metabolism rises
Top: Magnesium 46%. Zinc up +14pp; Green Tea climbs for summer
April 2026
Energy and beauty tilt
Top: Vitamin B12 56%. Caffeine and Hyaluronic Acid step up for summer
March 2026
The functionals hold
Top: Magnesium 43%. Green Tea and Taurine stay strong as vitamins ease
December 2025
Winter beauty and immunity
Top: Calcium 41%. Collagen climbs to 28% for the gifting season
October 2025
The immune build begins
Top: Magnesium 53%. Selenium surged +26pp as immune demand landed
September 2025
Beauty steps forward
Top: Calcium 29%. Collagen climbs to 23% as the vitamins reset
August 2025
The multivitamin spike
Top: Vitamin B6 67%. Every core vitamin above 60%, our biggest reading
June 2025
Minerals surge
Top: Magnesium 51%. Magnesium takes the top spot for the first time
May 2025
The base takes shape
Top: Calcium 30%. Where the data record begins; Zinc the fastest riser
July 2024
Where it began
The original Supplement Trends edition, where the series started
How the Formulation Index is built
Published monthly by Supplement Factory, a UK supplement contract manufacturer and R&D house.
- What is the data?
- The ingredients, formats and categories that Supplement Factory is actually asked to manufacture, taken directly from our own quoting systems. Every figure comes from real formulations quoted to real clients, aggregated anonymously. No third-party data, no search-volume proxy. From September 2026 the Index also listens to enquiries: the product briefs sent to our sales team by email and through our website chat are scanned for the same ingredient list, so demand registers from the first conversation as well as at quote.
- How is popularity measured?
- By distinct quotes in the calendar month. Each ingredient is counted once per formulation, and revised or superseded quotes are never counted twice. A share of 50% means the ingredient appeared in half of the formulations we quoted that month. Alongside share, we track demand: the total number of distinct quotes and enquiries naming an ingredient, each counted once.
- What is excluded, and why?
- Fillers, sweeteners, flavours, carriers and packaging are recognised and deliberately left out, so the Index reflects the active ingredients brands actually choose.
- How is the month-on-month move calculated?
- By comparing an item’s share this calendar month with its share the previous calendar month, in percentage points. Where the sample is too small to support a direction, no move is claimed. From September 2026 the live ticker shows demand growth instead: the percentage change in the number of quotes and enquiries naming an ingredient versus the previous 30 days. Total quoting volume roughly doubled over summer 2026, which pushed most share moves negative even as demand rose; growth reports the movement plainly. Monthly editions continue to publish share moves in percentage points.
- Can the numbers be trusted?
- Yes. Every published figure is traceable to a stored query and timestamp on our own systems, and the method is fixed and applied the same way every month. It is our own manufacturing demand, reported plainly. Enquiry mentions are computed by the same stored matcher, and the change of September 2026 is recorded here rather than applied silently.
Supplement Factory Ltd, contract supplement manufacturer, United Kingdom. Have a product in mind? Talk to the team.