Overview
- Retailers including Rewe, Edeka, Kaufland and Aldi reported visible tofu gaps in stores in early June as consumer demand has outstripped available supply.
- The market leader Taifun said a late‑2025 machine breakdown and subsequent production problems forced it to suspend some products and shrink shipments to retailers.
- Other makers such as Treiber and Berief say they are producing at capacity and cannot quickly increase output, and companies stress that soy bean supply is not the limiting factor.
- Taifun has announced capacity investments, including a new tofu line and a soy silo in Freiburg, while the company and retailers say full normalization is unlikely before late 2026 and some SKUs may return in staged steps into 2027.
- The shortage reflects a longer trend of surging tofu demand—driven by urban and younger shoppers, private‑label growth and protein trends—so the gap could push customers toward other protein products and keep pressure on plant‑based supply chains.