I don't think that anglers ever realised how much bait really cost for a decent bait.
Years ago, late 1990's or early 2000's, to make a bait at home a 10kilogramme bucket of a good Nutrabaits base mix was £72, (Trigga), add in the Liquid Trigga, eggs and additives and it worked out at around £9.50 per kilo of boilies.
The finished product if you bought them from a tackle shop was originally £10.99 per kilo, although that doesn't include the additions I put in myself to improve the bait slightly.
Then the rolling companies started making bait themselves, and selling direct rather than only tackle shop sales, which cut bait prices by around 30% as it removed the 'wholesaler' or middle man who sold to the tackle shop, or the tackle shop adding their cut after buying from Nutrabaits, Mainline, Mistral, or KM, pick a few others.
Then you had home rollers getting in on wanting to make bait, and bait quality dropped as they could sling a mix together and with many anglers switching baits every week, and decent bait ingredients increased in price. Mr Home Roller couldn't buy a pallet of fishmeal for the same price as Mainline or Nutrabaits.
Home rollers often ended up selling cake mix boilies.