Facts about flour

Flour in a wheat scoop

Flour is one of the most important ingredients in the UK. It provides a vast array of essential vitamins and minerals including iron, calcium and fibre; for more on the nutritional contribution of flour see here.  Below, you can find some interesting facts about wheat and flour. We also have facts on bread.

  • One whole grain of wheat makes over 20,000 particles of flour.
  • It takes around 350 ears of wheat to make enough flour for one 800g loaf of bread.
  • There are 30 flour milling companies operating 51 mills in the UK. Virtually all of these are UK Flour Millers members: UK Flour Millers is the representative organisation for the UK flour milling industry, www.ukflourmillers.org.
  • In 2020/21 UK flour millers used over 5 million tonnes of wheat to produce just over 4 million tonnes of flour (source: DEFRA/UK Flour Millers).
  • About 85% of flour in the UK is milled from wheat also grown in the UK. Home grown grains, blended with small amounts of imported wheat, and the unsurpassed skill and efficiency of our millers, means that Britain is consistently producing exceptional flours.
  • Breadmaking flour accounted for just under 65% of flour production in 2021.
  • Latest data shows that that the average UK flour consumption per person per year was 54kg in 2019/20 (source Statista, January 2022). While bread consumption was 562g per person per week.

You can find out how flour is made here.

Some of the latest industry facts and figures are set out in the infographic below