Warburtons has knocked Cadbury Dairy Milk off the number-two spot in a league table of the UK's most valuable grocery brands, as the chocolate marque felt the effects of product recalls and health scares.

Cadbury Dairy Milk slipped from second to third place, losing an £83m chunk of value, while Warburtons was the fastest riser with a 24% increase taking its brand value to £516m. Coca-Cola retained top spot with a brand value of nearly £1.2bn.

The report - The UK's Most Valuable Grocery Brands 2007 - is compiled by brand valuation consultancy Intangible Business. Brands are scored through a combination of sales data and consumer perceptions of how strong they are.

Further highlights this year included smoothie brand Innocent making its debut at number 48 and last year's best performer, Actimel, becoming this year's worst, falling 38% in brand value and dropping nine places down the chart.

The Top 10
1. Coca-Cola £1,164m
2. Warburtons (+1) £516m
3. Cadbury Dairy Milk (-1) £441m
4. Lucozade (+2) £399m
5. Hovis £395m
6. Nescafe (-2) £377m
7. Robinsons £333m
8. Andrex £310m
9. Heinz Baked Beanz £264m
10. Pepsi £242m

The biggest upward movers over the last 12 months included:

• Bakers Petfood (81), with a brand value up 20% to £58m.
• Uncle Ben's Rice, up 18%
• Doritos, up 18%
• Fairy Laundry, up 18%

Brands experiencing downward shifts included Birds Eye Frozen Ready Meals (61), which dropped 12 positions and 28% in brand value.
There were 11 new entrants, of which the top ten are:

1. Innocent (48) £93m
2. Danone Activia (52) £84m
3. Oasis (66) £67m
4. Twinings (70) £64m
5. Highland Spring (79) £59m
6. Baxters Soup (90) £51m
7. Capri Sun (93) £51m
8. Kettle Chips (95) £50m
9. Green & Black's (97) £49m
10. New Covent Garden Soup (98) £40m

Stuart Whitwell, joint managing director of Intangible Business said: "Coke extended its lead, Cadbury suffered under health scares from which Bernard Matthews emerged largely unscathed, the Actimel steam train hit the buffers, Innocent debuted in the top 50 and Premier Foods entered the major league for the first time."

He added: "Innovation has been the key to the best performers and new entrants in 2007 such as Innocent, Warburtons, New Covent Garden Soup and Kettle Chips. Each of these brands have skilfully carved out a niche, increased distribution, invested in their brands and ridden the wave of relevant consumer trends such as health, convenience and provenance.

"These new brands are really challenging the more established players and, I suspect, attracting their attention as possible acquisition targets in 2008."