Category Archives: Spreads & sauces

Spreads & sauces, Vinegar

Rasch actions: Holbrook’s Sauce

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How did Holbrook’s become the highest selling Worcestershire sauce in the world?

A vinegar brewery is established
John Leslie Tompson (1841 – 1901) established a malt vinegar brewery at Ashted Row, Birmingham in 1868. Financial capital was provided by his father, a wealthy maltster. The English Midlands were rapidly displacing London as the centre of the British malting and brewing industry by the 1860s.

Tompson & Co began to manufacture pickles and sauces from 1875.

Frederic Carne Rasch (1847 – 1914) injected £10,000 into the Tompson & Co in 1875 and was appointed chairman.

Sir Frederic Carne Rasch (1847 – 1914) in 1896

Tompson & Co acquired a vinegar brewery at Cheapside, Stourport in Worcestershire from Swann & Co in 1876. Established in 1798, it was one of the largest vinegar breweries in England.

John Tompson retired in 1878, and left the business in the control of John Leslie Tompson and Carne Rasch.

Birmingham Vinegar Brewery
The business was converted into a limited liability company, the Birmingham Vinegar Brewery in 1879. It had a nominal capital of £100,000. John Leslie Tompson was appointed as managing director. Nearly two million bottles and jars of pickles and sauces were sold every year.

A Worcestershire sauce was introduced, from an old Indian recipe, in 1880. It was cold-brewed, a method that allegedly resulted in a smoother and fruitier sauce. It took between two to five years to produce, and used 27 different ingredients, including brandy, sherry, vinegar, molasses, shallots, salt, tamarind, walnuts, garlic, chillies, cloves and lemon.

William Daniel Holbrook (1842 – 1913) was appointed manager of the North of England office. He began to take large orders, particularly for the Worcestershire sauce. John Tompson decided to name the line of sauces and pickles after his leading salesman.

A considerable export trade had been developed in Australasia by the 1880s. The South African market had been entered by 1883.

Private correspondence reveals that Carne Rasch came to regard J L Tompson as a swindler who he suspected of falsifying expenses charges. Tompson was declared bankrupt following a series of unfortunate personal investments in 1884.

W D Holbrook was accused, but ultimately acquitted, of stealing over £900 from the company in 1887. He subsequently worked as a journalist in Manchester before emigrating to New Zealand in 1893, where he apparently married a wealthy woman.

Ten million bottles of Holbrook’s Worcestershire sauce were sold in 1888. Advertising claimed that sales were high because, “it is the best and cheapest”. It sold for around half the price of the rival Lea & Perrins product.

Three large wooden vats, each capable of holding 140,000 gallons of vinegar, were installed at Stourport in around 1891. It is believed that they were the largest vats in the world.

The Ashted Row factory in Birmingham, c.1910

The Birmingham Vinegar Brewery had a capital of £150,000 by 1897. It was the second largest vinegar manufacturer in the world.

Holbrook’s was the highest-selling Worcestershire sauce in the world by 1898, due to its strong export market and low price. Nearly ten million bottles were sold every year. It was the leading brand of Worcestershire sauce in South Africa and Australasia.

Holbrooks
The name of the company was changed to Holbrooks Ltd from 1900. Worcestershire sauce was by far their most important product, followed by vinegar and pickles.

Vinegar production was centralised at Stourport in the early 1900s, and the Birmingham site concentrated on sauce and pickle manufacturing.

John Leslie Tompson died due to an accidental overdose of sleeping pills in 1901. Arthur Henry Tompson (1852 – 1927), brother of John Leslie Tompson, was appointed managing director of Holbrooks.

Holbrooks operated the largest Worcestershire sauce factory in the world by 1911. One of the vessels had a capacity of 100,000 gallons, and it was claimed to be the largest vat in the world. Holbrook’s Worcestershire sauce was supplied to the dining rooms of the House of Commons and the House of Lords.

Carne Rasch died in 1914.

A view of the Birmingham factory on Ashted Row

Holbrooks employed 600 people by 1914.

The First World War resulted in difficulties regarding procuring sufficient raw materials, labour and shipping. Much of the largely female workforce found employment producing munitions for the war effort, and much of the male staff enlisted in the armed forces.

Holbrooks established a factory in Sydney, Australia from 1920. Sited on three acres, it was the largest Worcestershire sauce factory in the British Empire. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of Worcestershire sauce were stored for maturation at any one time. Several hundred workers were permanently employed. The site included its own vinegar brewery and glass bottle factory.

The managing director in Australia was Captain Gilbert Nobbs (1880 – 1970), previously the export director. He had permanently lost his sight after he was shot through the head during the Battle of the Somme. Nobbs was a remarkable man who, despite being blind, taught himself to play golf and travelled around the world unassisted.

Arthur Henry Tompson died from nephritis in 1927.

War and post-war struggles
Domestic operations had become loss-making by 1939, due to what the chairman termed “insane competition” in the vinegar trade. However the profitability of the overseas businesses enabled Holbrooks to survive.

The condiments factory in Birmingham was entirely destroyed by German bombing during the Second World War. However the vinegar and Worcestershire sauce factories remained unharmed, and record sales were made in 1941-2.

Much of the export trade was lost during the Second World War due to a shortage of raw materials, bottles and labour.

British sales grew in the post-war period. The Stourport brewery produced over three million gallons of vinegar a year by 1949.

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Four million bottles of Holbrook’s Worcestershire sauce were sold in Australia in 1950. Captain Nobbs received an OBE in 1950, and retired as managing director of the Australian subsidiary the following year.

Two million bottles of Holbrook’s Worcestershire sauce were sold every year in South Africa by this period.

A total of over 300 million bottles of Holbrook’s Worcestershire sauce had been sold over the years by 1951.

Sale of the business
The Birmingham factory was subject to compulsory purchase by the Birmingham Corporation in 1954, and the site was redeveloped. Holbrooks consequently suffered from a cash-flow shortage, and was forced to sell its loss-making British business to British Vinegars, a joint venture between Crosse & Blackwell and Distillers, for £171,000 in 1954. Holbrook’s Worcestershire sauce continued to be produced at Stourport.

Holbrooks sold its profitable Australian and South African subsidiaries to Reckitt & Colman for £422,000 in 1955. The deal also included the rights to the brand outside of the UK and Europe.

Reckitt & Colman extended and improved the Australian factory in 1957.

Holbrook’s Worcestershire sauce continued to be sold in Britain until at least the mid-1970s. Its ingredients were listed as vinegar, molasses, shallots, salt, tamarind, walnuts, garlic, chillies, cloves and lemon.

Reckitt & Colman sold the Holbrooks business to Goodman Fielder for £5.5 million in 1997.

The Stourport brewery was closed with the loss of 22 jobs in 1999. The site had latterly produced Sarson’s vinegar.

Holbrook’s in the present day
Holbrook’s Worcestershire sauce continues as a leading brand in Australia, and is produced in South Africa by Tiger Brands.

Australian Holbrook’s Worcestershire sauce contains water, vinegar, brown sugar, golden syrup, anchovies, salt, tamarind, spices, caramel for colour, onion powder, garlic powder and flavourings.

South African Holbrook’s lists its ingredients as: water, vinegar, molasses, salt, MSG, cane sugar, spices, caramel for colour, flavourings and tamarind extract.

Spreads & sauces

Olde English: Chivers & Sons

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Chivers was the first large British firm to locate a jam factory within a fruit orchard. Chivers was one of the largest jam manufacturers in Britain by the early twentieth century.

Stephen Chivers establishes the business
Stephen Chivers acquired a small freehold farm in Histon, Cambridgeshire in 1806. His son, John Chivers, served an apprenticeship to a fruit grower and began to cultivate fruit on the estate. However the journey to market in London took fifty hours.

Fruit was also sold at a depot in Bradford, Yorkshire. There it was discovered that much of their crop was being purchased by jam-makers. The family decided to cut out the middleman, and manufacture jam for themselves.

John’s son Stephen Chivers (1824 – 1907) made jam in a small barn on the family estate from 1873. The recipe came from a relative who was a chef at Pembroke College, Cambridge.

Two years later a factory was built on land adjoining the village railway station. The factory had doubled in size by 1889. The firm competed on quality rather than on price.

Marmalade, custard powder and table jellies were produced from the 1880s. Lemon curd and custard powder had been added to production by the end of the century, allowing for year round employment of staff.

Inspired by their strong Baptist faith, the Chivers family had a paternalistic attitude towards their staff, and employee-worker relations were good.

The firm began to can English fruits from 1894. By this year the company had over 400 regular employees, bolstered by seasonal workers during peak times.

Chivers was the largest jam manufacturer in the Midlands and the largest fruit grower in Britain by 1897.

Chivers enters into mass production
Chivers enjoyed nationwide distribution by 1900. The firm was incorporated in 1901.

1,200 tons of strawberry and raspberry jam were produced in 1906.

Olde English thick cut marmalade was introduced from 1907.

A new fruit canning factory was erected in 1907. Over 1,000 workers were regularly employed by the firm by 1907, with hundreds more hired during the fruit season. During peak times, 100 tons of jam were produced daily.

Chivers was converted into a public company in 1913.

The company had an output of up to 20,000 tons of jam per year by 1921. During the busy season between 2,000 and 3,000 workers were employed. Much of the machinery in the factory was built by Chivers engineers. One machine was able to fill 80,000 tins per day.

A raspberry canning factory was opened in Montrose, Scotland in 1925.

The Chivers farm extended to over 5,000 acres by 1925, of which 1,500 which given over to orchards.

A vegetable canning factory was established in Huntingdon in 1930.

The Chivers estate covered 6,000 acres by 1931. The company employed 3,000 people by 1935.

Chivers was the largest canner of fruits and vegetables in England by 1938. About 4,500 people were employed across four factories. The farms had been extended to 7,000 acres, with 3,000 given over to fruit. Between four and five tons of marmalade were produced each year.

Chivers lost its market leading position after 1945, due to a failure to install modern equipment.

A Chivers jam advertisement from 1952
A Chivers jam advertisement from 1952

All of the ordinary shares were held by descendants of the Chivers family until 1952. The company had an authorised share capital of £1.5 million in 1952. There was a large export trade, particularly to the United States and Canada.

Factories at Histon, Huntingdonshire and Montrose in Scotland covered a total of 2.5 million square feet. Freehold farms covered 8,000 acres, and leasehold covered 1,000 acres. There were also manufacturing facilities at York and Wisbech, and Newry in Northern Ireland. The management comprised of members of the Chivers family. There were around 4,000 employees.

Chivers is acquired by Schweppes
Chivers was acquired by Schweppes, the British soft drink manufacturer, for £1.6 million in 1959. It was a friendly takeover, approved by the Chivers board of directors, all of whom were family members, and owned the majority of the shares.

Schweppes merged the company with other large sweet spreads manufacturers: Hartley’s, Rose’s and Moorhouse, but concentrated production at Histon.

The Histon, Cambridgeshire plant (2010)

Schweppes was able to provide much needed capital and introduced modern management techniques.

The Chivers family bought back the farming estates from Schweppes in 1962.

The Huntingdon factory closed was in 1966.

The Chivers brand was withdrawn in Britain from 2004, with all products rebranded under the Hartley’s name. Chivers Olde English is produced in the United States under licence, and Chivers products are still produced in Ireland by an independent company.

Spreads & sauces

The fruit of enterprise: Pink’s jam

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Pink’s was the largest producer of jam and marmalade in the world by the late nineteenth century.

Edward Pink era
Edward Pink (1827 – 1910) was born in Durley, Hampshire. He relocated to London where he served an apprenticeship to a grocer. He established a preserves business in Holborn from 1860.

Edward Pink
Thomas Pink (1855 – 1926)

His son, Thomas Pink (1855 – 1926), entered the business from 1867, at which point there were twelve employees. Edward Pink Jr later entered the business, and the firm became known as Edward Pink & Sons.

A factory had been established on Staple Street, Bermondsey, South London, where there was ample room for expansion, by 1871. The operation utilised steam-powered machinery by 1874. Over 400 people were permanently employed, rising to 600 during the busy seasons.

Scrupulous cleanliness was adhered to. The influential Dr Arthur Hassall (1817 – 1894) of The Lancet toured the company’s factory in 1874 and following scientific analysis of Pink products was able to vouch for their purity. Food adulteration was rife at the time, so this recommendation was hugely valuable for the firm.

Edward Pink & Sons added a small amount of apple jelly to its marmalade from 1874, in order to mellow the bitterness of the Seville oranges.

Edward Pink & Sons claimed to be “the largest manufacturer of preserves” by 1879. The firm catered largely to a working class market.

Edward Pink & Sons employed 263 men and 366 women, a total of 629 people, by 1881. From this time the firm added glucose to their jam, with the claim that this greatly improved the product.

Over 3,000 tons of jam were produced every year by 1882.

Edward Pink & Sons claimed to have the largest jam factory in the world by 1883. The factory site covered 4.5 acres by 1887.

E & T Pink
Thomas Pink became managing director of the firm from 1890, which henceforth became known as E & T Pink. Pink was a bold man, strong-willed and forthright. He was also hard-working, and a hands-on employer. Immediately after taking control of the business, he completely reorganised it.

In response to alleged intimidation of union members in 1892, the activist Clement Edwards (1869 – 1938) urged the Co-operative societies to boycott Pink products.

60 female workers in the finishing department went on strike in 1892 after their wages were reduced. They were all promptly replaced by new workers.

E & T Pink did not allow its workers to leave the premises during their lunch break, and did not provide a separate room where staff could rest during their break. A juryman described the situation as “shameful” in 1893. Following an appeal by John Burns MP (1858 – 1943) to Thomas Pink, permission was granted for outside breaks, and Pink opened a four storey, 1,000 seat capacity “mess house” for employees in 1894. It was probably the best-equipped staff building in London, according to the St James’s Gazette. Thomas Pink denied that this was an act of philanthropy, and stated his belief that treating his employees well would increase profits at his business.

There were 500 regular workers at E & T Pink by 1893, around 400 of whom were women. That year, 8,000 tons of jam were produced.

Edward Pink Sr retired in 1894, and Thomas Pink became sole proprietor of E & T Pink.

Pink employed 56 salesmen, 130 clerks, and over 1,800 workers during the busy season in 1894. His steam engines had a total of over 1,000 horse power. The factory covered ground of 4.5 acres, and had a floor space of eight acres.

E & T Pink was the largest manufacturer of jam in the world in 1894, with an average production of 40 tons per day. Pink controlled a twelfth of the British tapioca market. E & T Pink also claimed to be by far the largest manufacturer of marmalade in the world by the late nineteenth century.

Advertisement from 1890
Advertisement from 1890

Thomas Pink was a highly-gifted engineer: he designed the machinery for his pepper mills himself; he ground sixteen tons of pepper a week by 1894, and controlled an eighth of the British pepper trade.

Pink was innovative; he was the first British businessman to dictate his correspondence by phonograph. He conducted the majority of his business through the newly-invented telephone by 1894. A keen Conservative, Pink received a knighthood in 1904.

By appointing skilled heads of department, Sir Thomas Pink was able to reduce his time spent at E & T Pink. Pink preferred to find and promote from within his own business, in preference to hiring managers externally.

The Staple Street factory covered 7.5 acres of ground, with 15 acres of floor space, by 1899. There was a pepper mill at Hatcham, and two wharves at Horsleydown. A total of 2,000 people were employed. 10,000 tons of jam and marmalade were produced every year.

In 1901 Sir Thomas Pink estimated that he lost £1,000 to £1,500 a year due to petty thefts by his 2,500 employees.

Edward Pink died with an estate valued at £261,677 in 1910.

Profitability trouble and labour issues
E & T Pink was registered as a company in 1912.

Between 1910 and 1914 the business suffered heavy losses.

The factory was affected by a woman’s strike in 1911. The female workers managed to secure a wage increase of two shillings per week.

Pink's strikers in 1914
Pink’s women strikers in 1911

The Pink factory suffered a serious strike of around 1,000 people in 1914, involving most of the workforce except the clerical staff. The employees demanded an increase in their wages. Pink’s response was to close the entire factory, citing safety concerns for those among his workforce who remained loyal. This left a total of 1,200 to 1,500 people idle. Work resumed after Pink agreed to grant the minimum wage recommended by the Trade Board.

During the First World War, wartime contracts allowed E & T Pink to re-enter profitability, but following the end of the war, the losses returned.

A cooperage fire at Pink’s factory caused £20,000 worth of damage in 1918.

Sir Thomas Pink retired in 1919, and sold E & T Pink to the Van Den Bergh family.

Plaistowe merger and demise
E & T Pink was merged with Plaistowe, a fellow jam, marmalade and confectionery manufacturer, in 1920. The merger was motivated by anticipated economies of scale.

The merged company had an annual production of 24,000 tons of jam and marmalade, 7,500 tons of confectionery and 2,500 tons of Fulcreem food products. Total sales were over £2.75 million.

The company directors agreed that the Pink’s name had become noxious by 1921, and that a rebranding was necessary to increase sales.

After sustaining losses of £200,000 between 1920 and 1923, the E & T Pink subsidiary was liquidated, and the assets acquired by Plaistowe.

Following the merger, Sir Thomas Pink was retained in an advisory capacity, but had no directorial control. A keen smoker, drinker and meat eater, he died from heart failure at his London home following surgery in 1926. He left an estate valued at just over £275,000.

In his will Sir Thomas awarded a £750 annuity to his son, Thomas Bernard Pink (born 1882), who had emigrated to Canada in 1913, and after establishing himself in the Toronto real estate business, had not been heard from since 1914. It was believed that he enlisted in the Canadian army under an alias,  served in France and became a casualty of war.

Plaistowe entered into receivership in 1926. This was blamed on losses made by the Pink side of the business, as well as the mismanagement of the merger of the production of the two firms. Plaistowe was acquired by Crosse & Blackwell in 1930, who merged operations with their Keiller jam and confectionery subsidiary.

The Bermondsey factory was demolished in 1935, and replaced by a housing estate.

Canned food, Spreads & sauces, Vinegar

A tinned history of Crosse & Blackwell (1907 – 1927)

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This is Part II of my history of Crosse & Blackwell. (Links: Part I and Part III).

Crosse & Blackwell grew to become one of the largest food manufacturers in the world. It remains best known for tinned soup in Britain, English-style condiments in America and mayonnaise in South Africa.

This post tells the story of a large merger and subsequent disaster.

Crosse & Blackwell was one of the three largest fish canners in the world by 1909, alongside Maconochie Brothers and C & E Morton.

Despite suffering from heavy import duties, Crosse & Blackwell had developed a leading reputation and taken a significant share of the United States jam market by 1913.

Crosse & Blackwell employed 2,171 people by 1914. The London vinegar brewery held 91 vats, one of which was capable of holding 115,000 gallons. The company boasted an annual production of one million gallons of pure malt vinegar.

Edmund Meredith Crosse died in 1918 with a net estate valued at £310,633.

A small fish canning factory in Peterhead, Aberdeen, was acquired in 1919.

Crosse & Blackwell acquired James Keiller of Dundee, manufacturer of jam and marmalade, and E Lazenby of London, sauce and pickle manufacturers, in 1920. The combine had a capital of £10 million (£390 million in 2013) and fixed assets of £1.6 million. The takeover likely made Crosse & Blackwell the largest packaged food producer in the world, with over 7,000 employees and twelve factories.

Exports were growing and additional capacity was needed. A factory was acquired at Branston, Staffordshire, at a cost of £1 million (£39 million in 2013) in 1920. Situated on a 150 acre site, it was the largest and best equipped packaged food factory in the British Empire. The factory employed about 1,500 workers, mostly women and girls, although this was expected to expand to a staff of 5,000. Branston Pickle was first produced there in 1922.

Branston Pickle (2006). Source

As a result of the Branston purchase, the one acre Charing Cross Road factory, which lacked space for expansion, was sold off in 1921.

Unfortunately production costs at Branston proved higher than in London, as the capital was home to the bulk of British customers, and provided good access to export markets, which constituted the majority of sales. The Branston factory was shuttered in 1925 and lay unused until it was sold in 1927 at a large loss.

The debacle saw 5,500 tons of machinery, furniture and stock transferred back to London. Production at Branston was relocated to the Lazenby factory on Crimscott Street, Bermondsey (which was expanded), and Keiller’s Silvertown factory.

Meanwhile, the merger proved disastrous and the company began to lose money (over £1 million in 1922). An independent review commissioned by the company cited “serious duplication and overlapping in management” and “an embarrassing surplus of expensively equipped factory accommodation”. Furthermore, the company had presumed that the post-war boom would last forever, and had overpaid for raw materials.

This colossal failure left Crosse & Blackwell unable to pay its shareholders a dividend between 1921 and 1927.

Meanwhile, a small marmalade and jam factory was established outside Paris in 1925. Small factories were also established in Belgium and Altona, Germany.

Retail, Spreads & sauces

Cash cow: Maypole Dairy

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Maypole Dairy was easily the largest retailer in Britain by 1913.

The Watson brothers and George Jackson
George Watson (1861 – 1930), Charles Henry Watson (1863 – 1927) and John Alfred Watson (1865 – 1931), were brothers born just outside Coventry to a prosperous farming family. They served as apprentices and later as assistants to George Jackson, a Birmingham dairy merchant.

Jackson had pioneered the sale of pure dairy butter at affordable prices by importing the product directly from Danish farmers. Jackson sold 30,000 tons of butter every year by 1893, and was the largest retailer of butter in the world.

Establishment of Maypole Dairy
Jackson’s strong reputation for butter meant that he was reluctant to branch out into margarine, which although gaining in popularity, was hampered by a downmarket image. However George Watson was free to take the chance, and he established the Maypole Dairy Company, with a margarine shop in Wolverhampton, from 1887. He was soon joined by his brothers, and outlets were opened across the Midlands. The shops also began to sell cheese and butter.

Maypole Dairy was a high volume, low margin business, and outlets were concentrated in working class areas.

Charles Watson was largely responsible for the expansion of the Maypole chain into Lancashire and Yorkshire.

George Watson introduced a profit-sharing scheme for management from 1890. Shortly afterwards, in a pioneering move, the scheme was extended to all employees.

Maypole Dairy was the largest retailer of margarine in Britain by 1895. The business had 60 shops, eight creameries in Ireland and one in England, and purchasing offices in Denmark and Sweden.

Maypole merges with George Jackson
Maypole and George Jackson underwent a merger in 1898, and the company was incorporated with a share capital of £1 million. George Watson became chairman. The company had 185 retail shops and 17 creameries.

Maypole acquired a margarine factory in Godley, Manchester, from Otto Monsted Ltd, a Danish company, in 1902. It was capable of producing 200 tons of margarine every week.

Maypole had 560 retail shops by 1908, and was the largest retailer of tea, butter and margarine in the United Kingdom.

maypoles-dairy-shop-in-lynn-stret_large
A Maypole Dairy Store in Hartlepool

Maypole reported a net profit of over £550,000 (£425 million in 2015) in 1912, of which all but £50,000 was distributed among shareholders as a 212.5% dividend.* By this time there were 712 stores across the United Kingdom, and the leading lines were margarine and tea. That year, George Watson was appointed a baronet.

Maypole was the largest retail chain in Britain by a substantial margin by 1913, with over 800 shops.

Maypole, and the Dutch producers Jergens and Van den Bergh produced most of the margarine sold in Britain, with Maypole producing almost as much as the other two combined by 1913.

The Manchester margarine factory was sold to Lever Brothers in 1914.

Maypole acquired Otto Monsted’s margarine factory in Southall, Middlesex, and an edible oils refinery in Erith, South East London in 1915. The Southall factory covered 22,500 square yards, employed around 650 people and was the largest margarine factory in the world. It had a weekly output of 700 tons of margarine.

southall
The Southall factory

Maypole margarine differed from competitors in that it was produced from tropical nuts and seeds rather than animal fats. Maypole established a groundnut operation in West Africa to provide raw material for margarine production in 1915. 25,000 to 30,000 tons of groundnuts were produced annually by 1919.

Maypole dominated the sale and manufacture of margarine in the United Kingdom, with a 50 percent market share by 1918. The Southall site produced over 2,000 tons a week. Margarine accounted for 85 percent of Maypole sales.

maypoleinterior
The interior of a Maypole Dairy shop

Acquisition by Home & Colonial
Maypole capital amounted to £3 million (equivalent to just under £1 billion in 2015) in 1919. Turnover exceeded £36.5 million (£13.8 billion in 2015) in 1921.

However shortly afterwards the company began to struggle with increased Dutch competition and the failure of its West African business. Six directors retired in 1924, including the chairman, George Watson, and they sold their stakes to Home & Colonial. Now the majority owner, Home & Colonial was itself controlled by Jurgens.

Maypole increased its product lines to include jam, marmalade and lard from 1925. In 1928 biscuits were added, and cheese was re-introduced in packaged form.

Maypole is absorbed into Unilever
Maypole had over 1,040 retail outlets and a total capitalisation of over £9 million by 1929. That year, Jurgens and Van den Bergh merged with Lever Brothers of Britain to form Unilever. Maypole was now contractually obliged to purchase all of its margarine from Unilever. The Maypole manufacturing site at Southall was rendered redundant by the Unilever purchase, and was re-appropriated for the production of Wall’s sausages and ice cream. The Erith refinery was also closed.

Unilever created a holding company for its grocery chains; Lipton, Home & Colonial and Maypole Dairy, called Allied Suppliers, in 1930. Allied Suppliers had a capital of £13.3 million, and was the largest grocery retailer in the world. Each retail company continued to be run independently, but there was co-operation in wholesale acquisitions and distribution.

George Watson died in 1930, leaving an estate valued at over £2 million (about £805 million in 2015).

Maypole’s West African venture was sold to the United Africa Company, which was controlled by Unilever, in 1931.

Maypole sold over 200,000 eggs in 1938.

There were 977 Maypole stores and 6,334 employees in 1939. Rivals such as Tesco, which utilised bulk purchasing from suppliers, began to challenge the vertical integration model practised by Maypole.

By 1943 all but two company directors, and practically all senior executives, were men who had started at the bottom ranks of the company and worked their way up.

Faced with continued rationing after the war, Maypole began to extend its product range to include additional staples such as bacon from 1947.

The Maypole name is phased out
The independent management of Maypole ended in 1964. The Maypole name was phased out in the 1970s, when increased competition from supermarkets saw Allied Suppliers decide to concentrate on their Home & Colonial brand. Allied Suppliers eventually morphed into Safeway (UK), and the rights to the Maypole brand are now owned by Morrisons Supermarkets.

Unilever continued to hold a 30 percent share of the global spreads market, until the divested their spreads unit in 2017.

* Currency conversions are calculated by measuring wealth relative to the total output of the economy at the time. All calculations are from measuringworth.com

Confectionery, Spreads & sauces

Sticky situation: James Keiller & Son

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James Keiller & Son was influential in popularising marmalade, and was the leading manufacturer of the preserve in the world throughout much of the nineteenth century.

Origins and growth
Dundee, in the east of Scotland, has a long history of fruit growing. Janet Keiller operated a small confectionery business at Seagate, Dundee from the 1760s. She produced jams, and modified a quince recipe to create “chip” (shredded peel) marmalade. It was believed that the addition of the fibrous orange peel aided digestion.

Her son James Keiller (1775 – 1839) took over the business from 1797, and the firm assumed his name. Marmalade was just one of their many product lines, which included jams, cakes and confectionery. The firm was known as James Keiller & Son by 1827.

Alexander Keiller (1821 – 1877) took over the firm from his father in 1839 when it was still relatively modest. Alexander Keiller was a warm but reserved man, with a steely determination. He moved the premises to Castle Street in 1845. He increased production with the introduction of steam-powered machinery. He employed 60 people by 1851.

Keiller established a dedicated bakery department from the 1850s.

A modern day jar of Keiller orange marmalade (for export only!)
Keiller marmalade jar (2016)

“Dundee marmalade” had secured a worldwide reputation by 1857. Keiller was already exporting, mostly to expatriates in countries such as Australia and South Africa. The Dundee factory employed an average of 150 people (mostly women), rising to 200 during the marmalade season. Nearly 15 tons of sugar were used every week. Jams, candied peels and confectionery were produced when Seville oranges were out of season.

Alexander established a factory at St Peter Port, Guernsey, from 1857. The Channel Island location was chosen to avoid mainland sugar duty. Managed by his brother William (1829 – 1899), for twenty years, the site accounted for one third of the company’s 1,000 ton a year output. Around 200 people were employed by 1878. However, profits were to prove disappointing, and Alexander eventually bought out his brother’s third share in James Keiller & Son.

By the 1860s, Keiller was filling millions of these earthenware pots every year. They were made by Maling of Newcastle upon Tyne.
By the 1860s, Keiller was filling millions of these earthenware pots every year. They were made by Maling of Newcastle upon Tyne.

At a time when manufacturer’s adulteration of food was rife, Keiller invited The Lancet‘s food adulteration expert, Dr Arthur Hassall, to examine their marmalade in 1859, which he declared to be pure and “the finest he had ever tasted”.

James Boyd (1848 – 1926) joined the firm in 1864. He was promoted to junior partner from 1874.

Keiller was the largest confectionery manufacturer in Britain by 1869. Around 300 people were employed at the Dundee site. Following the death of his father, John Mitchell Keiller assumed control of the company from 1877.

With the abolition of sugar duty in 1871, manufacturing offshore lost its rationale. The Guernsey operation was relocated to Tay Wharf at Silvertown, London from 1879. J M Keiller used the opportunity to oust his uncle William, and install James Boyd as manager of the new factory, where around 260 people were employed.

Until the 1870s the jam was made with a 1:1 fruit to sugar ratio, and only the juice and peel of the fruit were used in order to maximise sweetness. The abolition of sugar duty gave preserve manufacturers the incentive to use all the bitter innards of the fruit, and simply increase the sugar content to compensate. This produced notable economies but decreased the quality of the product.

Keiller was probably the largest jam, marmalade and confectionery manufacturing enterprise in the world by the late 1880s.

Formation of a limited company
James Keiller & Sons became a limited liability company with a capital of £300,000 (£35 million in 2015) in 1893. J M Keiller used this juncture as an opportunity to step back from management of the business, and James Boyd became managing director.

Marmalade output had risen to over 3,000 tons a year by 1897. A similar weight of confectionery was also produced.

When J M Keiller died in 1899 his gross estate was valued at £521,000. He was the last Keiller to sit on the company board of directors. His son, Alexander Keiller (1889 -1955), inherited the entire company.

The Silvertown site, described as one of the largest factories in England, was completely gutted by fire in 1899, with the damage estimated at over £100,000. 1,400 workers were temporarily thrown out of employment whilst it was rebuilt. The next year the Dundee factory at Albert Square also burned down, and was rebuilt at a cost of £30,000. The building, stock and machinery had been insured for £118,000.

Keiller had a turnover of £350,000 by 1900.

A German subsidiary was established in 1906 with capital of £150,000 and a factory at Tangermunde, close to the sugar beet growing fields.

James Keiller & Son had a capital of £400,000 by 1908, and company assets were valued at £443,000. Around 2,000 people were employed in 1914.

Keiller was exporting millions of jars of marmalade and jam every month to British troops in France by 1917. In one year during the First World War 43,000 tons of jam and marmalade were produced. W M Mathew asserts that Keiller was the principal supplier of jam and marmalade to the Army.

Alexander Keiller did not engage in management of the company, and sold his entire shareholding in 1918. Much of his stake was acquired by the Boyd family.

James Keiller & Son is acquired by Crosse & Blackwell
James Keiller & Son was acquired by Crosse & Blackwell, the largest food processor in the British Empire, in 1919. Robert Boyd, managing director of Keiller, became chairman of C&B. The amalgamation gave C&B between 17 and 20 percent of the British jam market. Keiller continued to function as an independent concern with its own management, and only limited operations were merged.

There were nearly 800 employees in Dundee in 1920. There were over 1,000 workers in London in 1922. Keiller was described as the largest preserve manufacturer in the world in 1921.

The collapse of the post-war economic boom saw Keiller profits drop from £500,000 in 1919 to under £69,000 in 1920. Keiller announced a trading loss of £555,000 in 1921.

The German subsidiary was liquidated in 1923, after debts owed to it failed to be repaid following the end of the war. A fruit pulping and canning operation at Wisbech, Cambridgeshire was sold to Smedley & Co of Evesham in 1923.

Keiller marmalade production began at the Crosse & Blackwell factory in Vincennes outside Paris, France in 1925.

A new bakery plant was opened at Mains Loan, Dundee in 1928.

The glass jar with a metal lid was introduced for the UK market in 1928. The white jars were retained for export production.

Keiller claimed to be the original inventor of the Dundee cake by 1929. Dundee cake was the highest selling line of the bakery division, followed by shortbread.

Keiller supplied the King (marmalade) and Queen (chocolate) by royal appointment by 1931.

Keiller gained a licence to produce Toblerone in the UK from 1932.

All Keiller chocolate and confectionery production was centralised at Dundee from 1935, taking the number employed to around 900.

The Silvertown factory was completely destroyed during the Blitz, and had to be rebuilt.

The Albert Square factory was closed in 1947, and production was relocated to new premises in the city at Maryfield.

Keiller operated a chain of bakeries around the Dundee area by 1946. Keiller opened its first retail shop in Blairgowrie, Scotland in 1948.

Shortbread was the company’s highest selling export by the 1950s. America, the Middle East and the Far East were the principal overseas markets.

Keiller preserves manufacturing was transferred from Silvertown to Dundee in 1952, leaving Silvertown to produce Crosse & Blackwell branded goods.

From Nestle to the present
Crosse & Blackwell was acquired by Nestle of Switzerland in 1960.

Following the takeover of Chocolat Tobler by Associated Biscuits in 1967, Keiller lost the licence to produce Toblerone.

Keiller had been overtaken by Robertson’s and Frank Cooper’s in marmalade, and by Hartley’s, Chivers and Wilkin in jams by the 1970s.

Keiller ranked among the top six confectionery manufacturers in Britain in 1980, with a four percent market share and a workforce of 320 people. However Keiller became loss-making following a sales decline. The marmalade line operated for just one half-day a week. Nestle announced plans to close the factory.

Okhai of Dundee acquired Keiller, with a reduced workforce of 145. Okhai invested heavily to transform a site that had been losing £2 million a year into one that made an annual profit of £400,000. Export value increased from £500,000 to £4 million a year. 60,000 jars of marmalade were produced every day by 1985, and Okhai was awarded a Queen’s Award for export achievement.

Barker & Dobson acquired Keiller for £4.9 million in 1985. Barker & Dobson sold the Keiller preserves brand to Rank Hovis McDougall, who owned the Robertson’s preserves company, for £4.9 million in 1988. The preserves business had employed a staff of just 14, and production was relocated to the Robertson site in Manchester.

Barker & Dobson sold its confectionery arm to Alma Holdings, a rival sweet manufacturer, for £10 million in 1988. Alma relocated its headquarters to Dundee, and invested £8.5 million to transform the Keiller factory into one of the most modern confectionery plants in Europe. The staffing levels at the Dundee plant were doubled to around 500 people. Keiller was a leader in butterscotch production.

The high cost of borrowing combined with overcapacity in the industry saw Alma enter into receivership in 1992. The Keiller and Barker & Dobson brands were acquired by Craven of York for £3 million. Craven was subsequently renamed to Craven Keiller. It was the third largest sugar confectionery manufacturer in Britain, behind Trebor Bassett and Nestle.

Craven Keiller was acquired by Cadbury in 1996, who spun off their sweets arm as Monkhill, which was later acquired by Tangerine Confectionery. The Keiller brand was eventually phased out, and now no confectionery bears the name.

Keiller marmalade was withdrawn from sale in Britain, but is still produced as an export brand at Histon, Cambridgeshire by Hain Celestial. It is distributed to the North American and Australasian markets.

Spreads & sauces

Spread the wealth: a history of Hartley’s jam

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This is the story of how Hartley’s became the largest jam manufacturer in the world. It remains the leading brand of jam in Britain.

William Hartley establishes the business
William Pickles Hartley (1846 – 1922) was born in Colne, Lancashire, the only surviving son of a locksmith. He left school aged fourteen, and joined his mother’s modest grocery venture. Within two years he was running the business, which soon grew to become one of the largest wholesale grocers in Lancashire.

Due to the expense of strawberries jams in the early days were almost exclusively made of gooseberry, damson or a mixture of raspberry and gooseberry. Sales were almost entirely confined to the poorer classes, as the wealthy either made their own, or suspicious of the often adulterated products on the market, went without.

William Pickles Hartley (1846 – 1922)
William Pickles Hartley (1846 – 1922)

Hartley was an industrious man with a dedication to quality. Problems with suppliers led him to decide to produce his own jam. Full scale production began in 1871, with a staff of around twelve. The product was pure, containing nothing more than fruit and sugar. In the first year his output was 100 tons, sold to local grocers. Its high quality and keen pricing made it popular as an affordable substitute for butter.

Hartley lacked sufficient capital to develop both the grocery and the jam business: he determined that he had to give one up. Following the abolition of sugar duty in 1874, Hartley sold the grocery business and established a small jam factory in Bootle, Lancashire. Meanwhile, cheap grain imports saw vast amounts of agricultural land in Britain turned over to soft fruit production, which lowered crop prices. Hartley employed 150 people by 1881.

In 1883 Hartley produced 500 tons of damson jam, 400 tons of blackcurrant, 300 tons of gooseberry, 300 tons of raspberry, 200 tons of strawberry and 100 tons of blackberry. His principal markets were in Lancashire and Yorkshire.

Hartley enters into mass production at Aintree
Hartley acquired a 40 acre site at Aintree, Liverpool in 1886, and established a new factory. The site was chosen for its strong railway links. The works alone covered four acres and employed 1,420 people during peak times. The new factory was capable of producing 100 tons of preserves each day in the busy season of July and August. Marmalades and candied peel were produced throughout the rest of the year.

Hartley owned some fruit farms, and enjoyed good relations with contracted independent farmers. Fruit would be boiled into jam within a day of being picked. Exclusively English fruit was used in all jam production. Blackcurrants were sourced mainly from Cambridgeshire, and raspberries and strawberries came mainly from Kent and Somerset.

Hartley was a Primitive Methodist, and applied his Christian principles to business. Inspired by Titus Salt (1804 – 1876), Hartley built a model village across 50 acres for his workers. Like many other nonconformist denomination businessmen of the period, he introduced a profit-sharing scheme for his workforce. Wages were above average and free medical care was provided.

Hartley possibly suffered from what we would now classify as bipolar disorder. His biographer stated:

He was subject to great fluctuations of mood and these tended to vary with his health. At times nothing could thwart his amazing energy or daunt his radiant optimism. But when his nerves were badly worn or he was visited with the severe oppression on the top of his head, to which his friends at one period of his life so often heard him allude, this buoyancy gave way to depression and weariness.

Hartley opens a second factory at Bermondsey
Hartley’s was probably the leading jam in the North of England and the Midlands by the turn of the century. A factory was opened in Bermondsey, the centre for the fruit preserving trade, in order to cater for the London market, in 1901. The factory employed 700 people, processed 400 tons of fruit each week and produced ten million jars of preserves a year. The site covered two acres.

A view of the Hartley's site in Bermondsey
A view of the Hartley’s site in Bermondsey (author’s own work)

Hartley produced 14,500 tons of jam in 1907. Aintree employed between 600 and 2,000 people, depending on the season.

Hartley was the largest jam manufacturer in the world by 1912. The business was converted into a limited liability company in 1919.

Hartley donated generously to good causes. Towards the end of his life he gave away one third of his income. At the time of his death in 1922 he possessed an estate valued at £1 million.

The company continued to expand until 1925 when the death of the founder, increased competition and the Great Depression all took its toll. Diversification into fruit and vegetable canning from 1933 saw the company re-enter into growth.

William P Hartley is registered as a public company
William P Hartley Ltd become a public company with a capital of £1 million in 1936. The Aintree factory and warehouses covered eight acres. Jam manufacture was highly seasonal, but during peak periods upwards of 3,000 people were employed.

Black cherry jam was introduced during the Second World War, in response to demand from American servicemen.

In 1949 the factories employed 2,000 people, rising to 3,000 during the fruit season. During the pea season, 250,000 cans were processed every day.

The Aintree factory was largely rebuilt in 1951.

William P Hartley Ltd employed a workforce of 6,000 across four factories in England by 1956.

Hartley’s is acquired by Schweppes
William P Hartley Ltd was one of the largest canning and preserves companies in Britain when it was acquired by Schweppes, best known for soft drinks, for over £2 million in 1959. Company assets were valued at £1.1 million. Months earlier Schweppes had acquired Chivers, another leading preserve manufacturer. The combine, with a 25 percent market share in jam, displaced Robertson as the market leader in preserves in Britain.

Schweppes introduced Hartley’s New Jam from 1963. It utilised the new vacuum boiling process, which it was claimed improved product freshness against open vat boiling. The introduction of pineapple jam was to prove a great success, and soon accounted for nine percent of all New Jam sales.

Schweppes formed Hartley-Chivers Ltd in 1964. The manufacture of preserves was discontinued at Aintree in the mid-1960s, and production was relocated to the Chivers factory at Histon, Cambridgeshire, which was doubled in size.

The Schweppes takeover was to prove unsuccessful. Schweppes opened satellite depots, but extra handling of the jam resulted in decreased margins on what was already a low-profit product. Schweppes also ceased all own-label and bulk jam production, which lowered revenue.

Robertson had recaptured its lead in jam by 1969, with over a third of the market, while Schweppes held 15 to 20 percent. Supermarket own-label came third, followed by more expensive brands such as Wilkin and Frank Cooper.

Robertson held 26 percent of the jam market in 1971, while Hartley held 16 percent. Hartley tended to emphasise quality, while Robertson focused on value.

The Bermondsey factory was closed in 1975.

Hartleys_Best_Strawberry_Jam_340__82463

Premier Foods and Hain Celestial
Hartley Chivers became part of Premier Foods from 1981, following a management buyout. It was the largest manufacturer of preserves in Europe, and possibly the world. The Histon factory was fully modernised and, thanks to pulp imports from overseas, was able to produce year round.

Schweppes continued to produce soft drinks at the ten acre Aintree premises until its closure in 1984. The site was sold the following year to Liverpool County Council for £750,000.

Hartley Chivers claimed 30 percent of the British jam market in 1985, and produced 75 million jars a year, and 90 million cans of fruit and vegetables. It also held a 50 percent share of supermarket own-label preserve production.

The Chivers brand was discontinued from 2004, with all Chivers products rebranded as Hartley’s.

Hartley’s Best overtook Robertson’s jam in sales from 2005, as The Grocer reported that consumers were prepared to pay more for quality.

Premier Foods acquired Rank Hovis McDougall, which owned Robertson’s, in 2007. The acquisition gave Premier Foods a 35 percent share of the jam market. Robertson’s jam was phased out in favour of the Hartley’s brand from 2009. Robertson’s would continue as a mincemeat and marmalade brand.

The sweet spreads business of Premier Foods was sold to Hain Celestial for £200 million in 2012. The sale included the Hartley’s, Robertson’s, Frank Cooper’s and Rose’s preserves brands, as well as Gale’s honey and Sunpat peanut butter.

Spreads & sauces

Fishy tales: E Lazenby & Son

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Lazenby’s was one of the largest sauce manufacturers in Britain. Their flagship Harvey’s fish sauce was a popular condiment in Victorian homes.

Peter Harvey
Peter Harvey (1749 – 1812) was a chef to the Duke of Bolton (1720 – 1794). Harvey had left to become the landlord of the Red Lion in Bagshot, a large posthouse with stabling for fifty horses, by 1793.*

Harvey relocated to the Black Dog Inn at Bedfont, Middlesex, situated on the Great Western Road, a major route from London, from 1798. The Black Dog functioned as a posthouse, and as the halfway house between London and Bagshot.

Harvey gained a reputation as a culinary perfectionist. His cuisine gained a keen following among the aristocracy, including the Prince of Wales. Foremost among his offerings was a thin, brown-black sauce.** It had a base of vinegar, soy sauce and mushroom or walnut ketchup, and was flavoured with anchovies, garlic and cayenne pepper. The sauce was matured in charred pine barrels, which helped to darken the liquid.

The Lazenby family grow the business
Peter Harvey gifted the sauce recipe to his sister Elizabeth in 1793. With her husband John Lazenby, provision merchant at 6 Edward Street (renamed Wigmore Street from 1869), Portman Square, London, wholesale manufacture of the sauce commenced.

“Harvey’s Sauce” soon became well-known throughout London. The product had national distribution by 1807. The success of the sauce was such that it inspired numerous counterfeit productions, and Peter Harvey signed every bottle to confer authenticity from 1805. Harvey died in 1812, and Elizabeth began to sign the bottles herself.

Harvey’s Sauce became embedded in contemporary culture. Lord Byron referred to the product in his poem Beppo (1817). Later, Thackeray, Dickens and Edith Wharton would also reference it in their works.

The business was eventually passed to Elizabeth’s sons; Henry Lazenby (1784 – 1851) and Edward Frederick Lazenby (1790 – 1830), who continued to pay their mother an annuity of £300. Henry Lazenby took full control of the business from 1818.

Control of the company had passed to Elizabeth’s grandson, William Howard Harvey Lazenby (1808 – 1875), by 1848.

The business employed around 25 people in the 1850s, rising to 35 men in 1861. That year a factory was opened at Trinity Street, Borough.

William had retired by 1871, and control of the company passed to his son, Walter Lazenby (1835 – 1910). William’s estate was valued at £50,000 in 1875, or roughly £5.2 million in 2015.

Walter Lazenby was to greatly expand the business. He built a large new factory in Bermondsey. He expanded the product range to include a variety of pickles and sauces. Products were exported across the world, with South Africa and Canada the principal foreign markets.

E Lazenby & Son was registered as a limited company with an authorised capital of £300,000 in 1895.

“Harvey’s Sauce” became a genericized trademark, so the product was rebranded as “Lazenby’s Sauce” from 1900 onwards.

By the time Walter Lazenby died in 1910 he had had built the company into one of the largest sauce manufacturers in Britain, with over 600 employees and a worldwide reputation. The Aberdeen Journal described the company’s fish sauce recipe as a “gold mine”, and Lazenby left an estate valued at £377,480.

Charles Lazenby (1863 – 1929) was appointed chairman of the company following the death of his father.

The principal trade was in pickles by 1911. The most popular pickled vegetables were cucumbers (gherkins imported from the South of France), onions (largely imported from the Netherlands) and cauliflower (from Kent and Cambridgeshire). Pickled walnuts (imported from the Netherlands) were also popular. Outside of London, the principal market for Lazenby pickles were the prosperous industrial areas of Yorkshire and Lancashire.

E Lazenby & Son employed 800 people and had contracts to supply the Army, the Navy, and forces in India, by 1914.

The Crosse & Blackwell/Nestle era
E Lazenby & Son was acquired by Crosse & Blackwell, a large manufacturer of preserved foods, in 1919. Charles Lazenby was appointed to the Crosse & Blackwell board as one of ten directors. The takeover facilitated greater distribution of Lazenby products.

The company left the original Wigmore Street premises in 1922. The Trinity Street factory was closed in 1925 and production was transferred to Bermondsey.

The Bermondsey factory in 2017. Photo credit.

Charles Lazenby died in 1929 with a gross estate valued at £283,278.

Nestle of Switzerland acquired Crosse & Blackwell in 1960. E Lazenby branded foodstuffs continued to be sold in Britain until at least the late 1960s, but production may have ended with the closure of the Bermondsey factory in 1969.

Nestle sold off their Crosse & Blackwell operations in the early 21st century, and the (unused) rights to the E Lazenby name were acquired by Premier Foods. Nestle retains the rights to the Lazenby name in South Africa, where it survives as a popular brand of Worcestershire sauce.

Notes

  • The Red Lion at Bagshot played host to a reconciliation between Pitt the Elder (1708 – 1778), Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and John Wilkes (1725 – 1797) following a duel between the two men that ended in both their guns misfiring.
  • An anonymous recollection from 1842 alleges that Charles Combers (c.1752 – 1825), a patron of the Black Dog, gifted his mother’s original sauce recipe to Peter Harvey.
Spreads & sauces

Feast your eyes: Batty & Co of London

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Batty & Co of London was a pickle and sauce manufacturer. The business was acquired by Heinz in 1905 as part of their entry into the British market.

George Batty (1800 – 1874) was born in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, to a family with South Yorkshire roots. He moved to London and founded Batty & Co in 1824. Four years later he married Eliza Feast from Cheshunt, Herts.

Batty had acquired the recipes of the late Dr William Kitchiner (1775 – 1827), an eccentric but popular celebrity chef of the era, by 1834. Batty & Co produced Dr Kitchiner branded sauces, such as Salad Cream.

Batty formed a partnership with Robert Feast of Waltham Abbey, Essex, and they traded as Batty & Feast from 1836. Feast was almost certainly a relation to Batty through marriage. The merger combined Batty’s factory at 101-2 Leadenhall Street with Feast’s premises at 15-16 Finsbury Pavement, which were used as offices.

Batty & Feast employed 86 people by 1851. The firm wasn’t much smaller than Crosse & Blackwell, which employed 126 people.

Batty & Feast first introduced Nabob sauce at the Great Exhibition of 1851. The firm won the only prize medal for pickles at the exhibition. It was reported in the press that Queen Victoria showed a great interest in the Batty & Feast stand.

The partnership was dissolved by mutual consent in 1852, with George Batty taking on all liabilities. Feast retained the Finsbury offices, and Batty relocated his offices to Leadenhall Street. Batty decided to concentrate on the export trade, particularly Australia.

An independent examination in 1855 reported that Batty & Co “India Soy” comprised of “little more than treacle strongly flavoured with salt”. This was common practice at the time, but undoubtedly the company did not enjoy as high a reputation as Crosse & Blackwell. The company was fined five shillings plus costs for selling short measures of its products in 1867.

Batty & Co employed 110 people by 1861. The company produced around 80 tons of isinglass, made from fish and used for clarifying beer, in 1862.

Batty & Co employed between 50 and 100 men in 1871, the exact figure varying with the season. The company’s best known products, Nabob Pickle and Nabob Sauce, began to be advertised from the 1870s. The company claimed to have been the first to bottle calves feet in jelly, a popular product at the time.

Batty & Co declared bankruptcy in August 1874, with £34,000 in liabilities (£3.5 million in 2015). The company’s assets were said to be of “very considerable value” in The Times. George Batty died in October the same year.

The business was acquired by Slee, Slee & Co, vinegar manufacturers of Southwark, and Batty products remained in production.

In the late nineteenth century Batty & Co built a factory in Peckham. It had 38,000 sq ft of covered space and 33,750 sq ft of open space. The premises included a number of railway arches, 17 for storage and two for processing.

George Batty’s son established a similar business, Henry Batty & Co, in Edinburgh in 1884, which survived until 1926.

Batty & Co was incorporated as a limited company in 1901. The company was acquired by H J Heinz, who wanted a British manufacturing base, in 1905. The Batty brand was phased out in 1910 and its products were rebranded under the Heinz label. The Batty brand survived for a further few years in export markets.

Canned food, Spreads & sauces

Full of beans: Heinz in the UK

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Heinz is best known in Britain for baked beans, tinned soup and condiments. The business became successful due to a dedication to quality, a concentration on relatively few product lines, and a strong commitment to marketing.

Background
Henry John Heinz (1844 – 1919) was born in Pennsylvania, the son of a Bavarian immigrant. He sold bottled horseradish sauce in Sharpsburg from 1869. He aimed to emulate the standard set by Crosse & Blackwell, then considered one of the greatest food businesses in the world. He packaged his products in clear glass bottles in order to demonstrate its quality. Heinz relocated his operations to Pittsburgh in 1872.

Henry John Heinz (1844 – 1919) in 1917

Fortnum & Mason of London held the highest reputation of all food retailers. H J Heinz cold-called on the head of its grocery department in 1886, and managed to persuade him to stock all of the seven product lines he brought with him.

Heinz was the largest pickle manufacturer in the world by 1891.

H J Heinz used the “57 varieties” slogan from 1892. He actually had more product lines than this, but decided that the tagline had a pleasing resonance.

Establishment of a British subsidiary
A British subsidiary was established to manage Heinz imports from North America in 1886. Heinz products were distributed in the North of England from 1899.

H J Heinz appointed Charles Hellen (1866 – 1944), a perfectionist and “the best man I’ve got” as general manager for Britain from 1905. Hellen spearheaded the acquisition of Batty & Co, makers of the popular Nabob Pickle, in order to gain a manufacturing site for Heinz products. The Batty brand was phased out in 1910.

Salad Cream was introduced in 1914, and was the first product that Heinz created specifically for the British market. It was supposedly formulated by Charles Hellen himself, although the recipe likely owed a debt to Batty’s own “Dr Kitchener’s Salad Cream” product.

Heinz UK was established as a private company in 1917.

H J Heinz died in 1919, leaving an estate valued at £1.1 million (about £115 million in 2015).

Heinz becomes a mass producer in the UK
Heinz UK sales quadrupled between 1919 and 1927.

A 22-acre factory site was established at Harlesden, London, from 1925. The larger factory, with a staff of 500, allowed Heinz to mass produce, and pass on the economies of scale to the consumer.

A view of the Harlesden site by Russell Trebor in 1992

Baked beans were manufactured in the UK from 1928. Soups and spaghetti production began in 1930. All products sold in Britain were manufactured domestically by 1933, except for four tomato-based products which were imported from Canada.

A new soup factory was established at Harlesden from 1934. The three-storey building produced millions of tins of soup a year, across eighteen different varieties. The extension saw the Harlesden site increased from 22 to 40 acres. The site produced 100 million cans a year by 1936.

Howard Heinz (1877 – 1941), the company president, donated £20,000 (£1.2 million) to buy aircraft for the British war effort in 1940. He also invited staff to send their children to America for the duration of the war at the company’s expense.

Heinz UK was converted into a public company, Heinz Ltd, valued at over £9 million, in 1948. The American parent company owned 91 percent of the shares.

A former munitions factory in Standish, Lancashire, was acquired to produce Heinz baby food in 1948.

Heinz Ltd grew sixfold between 1945 and 1956. The company employed around 5,100 people.

Heinz was granted a Royal Warrant to supply Queen Elizabeth II in 1955.

It was claimed that Heinz was the best known brand name in Britain in 1957. By this time the British ate more baked beans per capita than the Americans. By this stage Heinz products in Britain were formulated differently from the American versions, apart from Tomato Ketchup, which remained consistent across every market.

A second large factory is established in Wigan
Demand remained high for Heinz products, and a new factory was established outside Wigan in 1959. Situated on a 130-acre site, it was the largest food factory in the British Commonwealth. It cost £6.5 million to build and employed 2,500 people. Two thirds of production was dedicated to soup, and one third to baked beans.

Meanwhile, the Standish site was closed and administrative offices were relocated to Hayes, London.

A 1925 advertisement for Heinz Tomato Ketchup

Heinz was by far the largest producer of canned foods in Britain by 1960, and produced over one million cans of baked beans and over one million cans of soup every day. The company enjoyed far greater market share for its products (other than tomato ketchup) in Britain than it did in its home country.

Tinned ravioli was launched in 1965, and spaghetti hoops were introduced from 1969.

Heinz dominated the baked beans market with an 80 percent share by 1967. That year saw the popular “Beanz Meanz Heinz” slogan introduced. Heinz held 83 percent of the baby food market by volume in 1967. Heinz had 60 percent of the canned soup market (and 40 percent of the overall soup market) and 31 percent of the sauce market (behind HP) by 1968. The company had 80 percent of the tinned spaghetti market by 1969.

Heinz acquired a 40 percent stake in Manor Vinegar Brewery of Burntwood, Staffordshire in 1969. A supplier to Heinz since 1917, it was the single largest vinegar producing facility in Britain, and produced about five million gallons a year. Vinegar bottling was transferred from Harlesden to Burntwood.

Annual sales of Heinz Ltd surpassed £100 million (£1.2 billion in 2015) for the first time in 1972. Heinz of America acquired the eight percent of its British subsidiary that it did not already own for £7.7 million in 1977.

The Harlesden factory employed over 2,000 people in 1980.

Heinz sold its Manor Vinegar Brewery stake to Hazelwood Foods for £1 million in 1981.

The rise of supermarket own-label products
Heinz began to suffer from the late 1970s into the 1980s as supermarket own-label products began to take significant market share in traditional Heinz categories such as tinned soup. Own-label accounted for 37 percent of the baked bean market by 1982. Heinz reduced its workforce from 8,600 to 4,800 between 1975 and 1985.

High-speed automation was introduced to the Wigan and Harlesden factories in the mid to late 1980s.

A view of the Heinz factory outside Wigan (2009). Credit: David Ashcroft

Heinz marketing began to emphasise product quality in order to counteract the threat from own-label. The company began to manufacture own-label baked beans for supermarket chains such as Tesco from 1993. Heinz maintained that they only produced value beans for supermarkets, to a different recipe from their branded product, which enabled them to capture a greater share of the market without damaging their brand equity.

Heinz acquired Farley of Plymouth from Boots for £94 million in 1994. Farley was the largest manufacturer of infant formula in Britain.

The Harlesden factory was closed with the loss of 450 jobs in 2000. Production was relocated to Wigan.

Heinz acquired HP, with brands including Lea & Perrins and Daddies Sauce, for £470 million in 2005.

The HP factory in Aston, Birmingham, was closed in 2007. Production of HP Sauce was relocated to the Netherlands.

Kraft Heinz
Heinz merged with Kraft in 2015. The Wigan site received an investment of £113 million between 2015 and 2018.

Heinz employed around 2,100 people across the UK and Ireland in 2019. The 53-acre Wigan site produces over one billion cans of food each year, and is the largest food factory in Europe, and the largest canning plant in the world. In Britain, Heinz has the largest market share in tomato ketchup (80 percent), baked beans (70 percent), canned soup (70 percent), brown sauce (70 percent) and baby food.