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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.

Spreads & sauces

Sauce material: an overview of brown sauce

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HP is the highest-selling brown sauce in Britain and Canada. A1 has higher sales in the United States and Japan. Yorkshire Relish retains popularity in Ireland. OK sauce remains popular in China. In Japan they have their own brown sauce inspired by the English version called tonkatsu sauce.

Arguably the ur-type brown sauce was Lea & Perrins’ Worcestershire sauce. We don’t think of it as a brown sauce today, but its ingredients; molasses, vinegar, citrus fruits, tamarind, and its taste; sweet, bitter, savoury, tangy, spicy; almost certainly informed the earliest brown sauces.

The great celebrity chef of the early Victorian period, Alexis Soyer (1810 – 1858), formulated an early brown sauce, which was manufactured by Crosse & Blackwell from the late 1840s. His Sauce Succulente was described as, “thick, pulpy and of a reddish-brown colour. It contains vinegar, a considerable quantity of tomato, wheat flour, shallots, garlic, redcurrant jelly and several herbs”.

By the early 1850s the brown sauce market had been established. The products tended to include tomatoes, garlic, shallots, mushroom and walnut ketchup, raisins, tamarind, soybean, herbs, spices, and salt. Treacle and caramel were used for colour, and flour was used as a thickening agent. Some contained anchovies.

Brown sauce became popular as a byproduct of industrialisation. Meat that was imported from the country to the towns and cities was up to three days old, and brown sauce improved its flavour.

Henderson Brand introduced A1 sauce in 1862. The sauce contained tomatoes, raisins and orange marmalade.

Brand’s nephew George Mason introduced an imitation of A1 called OK in 1880. OK was thicker, and included more fruit, including mangoes and apples.

HP sauce was introduced in 1889. It is similar to A1 but thicker, and contains tamarind. Other ingredients in the original recipe include garlic, shallots, ground mace, tomato purée, cayenne pepper, ground ginger, raisins, flour, salt and malt vinegar.

HP, A1 and OK were all acquired by large conglomerates in the 1960s. HP was already the highest-selling brown sauce in Britain by this time. However its acquisition by Imperial Tobacco, one of the largest companies in the world, saw investment in new machinery at its factories and a huge increase in marketing spend. Large competitors, including Rank Hovis McDougall and Colman’s, could not compete with Imperial’s massive firepower, and one by one HP’s competitors faded away.

Brown sauce was highly regionalised in Britain as late as the 1970s, with HP the only national player. Daddies was strong in the South West, Fletcher’s was strong in the West and East Ridings of Yorkshire, while Heinz Ideal Sauce and Hammonds Chop Sauce were strong in the North Riding. OK sauce had a large share of the London market.

From the 1970s the supermarkets streamlined their product offerings, usually focussing on the market leader and an own-label brown sauce.

Spreads & sauces

Yorkshire Relish: Goodall, Backhouse & Co

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Yorkshire Relish was the highest-selling bottled sauce in the Victorian era. It was advertised as “the most delicious sauce in the world”.

Goodall, Backhouse & Co is established
Robert Goodall (1831-1870) was born in Market Weighton, Yorkshire. After serving an apprenticeship to a chemist, he established a small chemist’s shop on Wade Lane, Leeds from 1853.

Goodall entered into partnership with two chemists, William Powell (1836-1900), his brother-in-law and former apprentice, and Henry Backhouse (1829 – 1876), to acquire the business of Bell & Brooke, Leeds wholesale chemists, from Thomas Bell (1801 – 1878), who was retiring, in 1858.

The firm, now known as Goodall, Backhouse & Co, moved to Bell & Brooke’s larger premises at 46 Boar Lane. Goodall held 50 percent of the equity in the firm, and Backhouse and Powell each held a 25 percent stake.

Many chemists of the era branched out into consumer goods products, and Goodall began to manufacture “Yorkshire Relish” using a family recipe from 1865. It was a thin sauce, comparable to Worcestershire, but it was fruitier and did not contain anchovies.

The base of Yorkshire Relish consisted of shallots, soy sauce, garlic and malt vinegar. It was flavoured with 27 “Eastern spices” including black pepper. The sauce was matured in wooden vats for at least 14 months and up to three years.

yorkshirerelish

Robert Goodall died in 1870, and his stake in the business was inherited by William Powell. The firm relocated from Boar Lane to White Horse Street in 1873, and retail activities were discontinued. The firm developed as pharmaceutical wholesalers and sauce manufacturers. William Powell became sole proprietor of the business from 1876, following the death of Henry Backhouse.

Goodall Backhouse operated the largest sauce factory in the world by 1874. The steam-powered factory was largely mechanised, and occupied a six-floor building.

Every bottle of Yorkshire Relish was embossed with a willow tree logo to confer authenticity by 1870. Over 670,000 bottles of Yorkshire Relish were sold in August 1872. Yorkshire Relish holds trademark no. 3,101; it was among the first names to be registered when trademarks were introduced in 1876.

William Powell Bowman (1862 – 1955), the nephew of William Powell, entered the business from 1877.

Eight million bottles of Yorkshire Relish were sold in 1885. Yorkshire Relish even received a recommendation from Charles Perrins (1864 – 1958) of Lea & Perrins, manufacturers of the original Worcestershire sauce.

The White Horse Street factory was doubled in size in 1886. The business employed a workforce of 400, including 100 people directly involved in Yorkshire Relish production and bottling.

When asked to account for the popularity of Yorkshire Relish, W P Bowman responded; “it is good and cheap, never varies in its quality, and its uniform excellence is now thoroughly established”.

Goodall Backhouse advertised heavily, and had an annual marketing spend of £40,000 to £50,000 per annum by 1888.

Goodall Backhouse was involved in a landmark House of Lords legal case against the Birmingham Vinegar Brewery, who had begun to manufacture an imitation product which they branded as “Yorkshire Relish”, in the 1890s. The case ruled that only Goodall Backhouse could use the name. Powell spent £25,000 in legal fees to defend his trademark rights against other businesses between 1892 and 1900.

Under the astute leadership of William Powell the business became one of the largest sauce manufacturers in the world. There were around 500 employees at the firm by 1900.

William Powell Bowman takes control of the business
William Powell died a lifelong bachelor in 1900, and left the firm to two nephews. William Powell Bowman gained a two thirds stake, and Frank Boyce received one third.

The factories occupied some ten acres of floor space by 1907, and the wage bill ran to over £80,000 (£8.5 million in 2015). Thirteen million bottles of Yorkshire Relish were sold each year. It remained the highest selling sauce in the world as late as 1911.

Bowman bought the remaining third of the company from Boyce for £36,000 (around £2.7 million in 2015) in 1916. Bowman was joined by his eldest son, George Edward Bowman (1901 – 1979), from 1921.

Following the introduction of import tariffs in Ireland in 1933, Charles Ernest Hogg established Goodall’s of Ireland, which produced the sauce for that market under licence.

Goodall Backhouse became a limited company with a capital of £125,000 (£8 million in 2015) from 1934.

A thick version of Yorkshire Relish was introduced from 1935, under the initiative of George Edward Bowman. It was made from apples, tomatoes, dates, tamarinds and spices. It allegedly had a more subtle, and fruitier taste than rivals such as HP and Daddies.

Goodall Backhouse was awarded a royal warrant from George V.

The company’s drugs business and properties on White Horse Street in Leeds were spun off as a separate company called “Goodalls (Leeds), Ltd” in 1937. George Edward Bowman remained as a director of the drugs business. The remnant foods business, mostly employed in the manufacture of Yorkshire Relish, had a staff of over 300 people and a works located on Sovereign Street.

George Edward Bowman had taken over as managing director of Goodall Backhouse by 1947, with William Powell Bowman serving as governing chairman.

Death of W P Bowman and sale of the business
William Powell Bowman died in 1955. A reserved man, he was said to have never suffered a day of illness in his life.

Goodall Backhouse struggled in the wake of the death of W P Bowman. His successor, George Edward Bowman, was an excellent salesman, but not a natural business manager.

Goodall Backhouse was sold to Hammonds Sauce Co of Shipley, Yorkshire in 1959. Hammonds (then, as now) was a largely regional brand, whereas Yorkshire Relish had a national presence and a large export market.

Hammonds was acquired by Pillsbury in 1982. Pillsbury closed the Leeds factory in 1985 and relocated all Hammonds production to a new £1 million factory in Bradford.

Pillsbury was acquired by Grand Metropolitan in 1988 who sold Pillsbury UK to Dalgety in 1991. Dalgety sold Hammonds to Albert Fisher for £12 million later that year.

Yorkshire Relish was available in thin, thick, spicy and fruity varieties by 1994. Only the thick version was available by 1996.

Hammonds was acquired by Unigate in 1999. The thick version of Yorkshire Relish had been discontinued due to low sales by 2001.

The Bradford factory was closed in 2002 and production of Hammonds sauces was relocated to a former vinegar brewery in Lancashire.

Hammonds is currently owned by McCormick, the American spice company. McCormick also own the rights to the Yorkshire Relish trademark.

Thin Yorkshire Relish is still produced by Robert Roberts in Ireland. The product has a base of vinegar, sugar and soy sauce. The thick version is also produced, under the name “YR Sauce”.

Leisure

Business cycles: a history of Raleigh

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Raleigh was the largest manufacturer of bicycles in the world throughout much of its history.

Frank Bowden establishes the business
Frank Bowden (1848 – 1921) was the son of a Bristol manufacturer. He trained as a lawyer, and went to Hong Kong to make his fortune.

Bowden was successful, but the Asian climate had destroyed his health by 1886. His doctor suggested he take up cycling as a remedy. After six months spent cycling on a Raleigh bike in the South of France, his health was much improved, and his commercial interest was roused.

Bowden entered into partnership with the Raleigh manufacturers, who manufactured two to three bikes a week from a small shop in Nottingham, in 1888.

The Raleigh Cycle Co was registered with a capital of £200,000 in 1896. By this time the business was the largest bicycle manufacturer in the world.

Frank Bowden went overseas to promote export sales. Whilst he was away the company floundered. Bowden returned to England and retrieved his son,  Harold Bowden (1880 – 1960), from university to help him reorganise and manage the business.

Frank Bowden acquired full control of the business from 1908.

1,700 workers produced over 60,000 cycles every year by 1913. Harold Bowden was responsible for day-to-day management of the business by this time.

During the First World War the company voluntarily offered its factories to the government to manufacture munitions. Frank Bowden was made a baronet in 1915 in recognition of his service during the war.

Raleigh was one of the largest munitions manufacturers in Britain by the close of the conflict, with a workforce of 5,000.

Harold Bowden succeeds his father
Sir Frank Bowden died in 1921 with an estate valued at £475,000. Harold Bowden inherited the entire business.

Sir Harold Bowden (1880 – 1960)

There were 2,000 workers by 1924, making 400 bicycles every day, and over 100 motorcycles a week.

Unable to find suppliers to furnish it with components of sufficient quantity and quality, Raleigh became a vertically-integrated business, manufacturing every part at its Nottingham site apart from tyres and chains.

During the General Strike of 1926, 800 Raleigh workers joined in sympathy. Following the strike, Bowden introduced a profit-sharing scheme for his workforce. He wanted his employees to be proud to work for Raleigh, and believed it was essential to afford them fair treatment.

The brand and design rights of the Humber Cycle Co were acquired in 1932. The Humber cycles functioned as a premium alternative to the Raleigh brand. All production was centralised at Nottingham.

Raleigh had been overtaken in sales by the Hercules Cycle Company of Aston, Birmingham by 1933.

Sir Harold Bowden retired as managing director of Raleigh from 1938, but remained as chairman.

The war and post-war period
The Nottingham factory and it’s 9,000 employees were engaged almost entirely in producing munitions during the Second World War.

The post-war period was to prove difficult for Raleigh as it took time to rebuild the business after the war. The company had expected to enjoy the post-war consumer goods boom, but the rise of the car had a negative impact on sales. However the business had an output of one million bicycles by 1953.

Sir Harold Bowden retired as chairman in 1954.

Raleigh acquired the bicycle subsidiary of BSA of Birmingham in 1957. Production was consolidated at Nottingham.

Raleigh pioneered moped production in Britain in 1958.

Takeover by Tube Investments
Raleigh was subject to a friendly takeover by Tube Investments for £10.8 million in 1960. This represented a merger of the two largest bicycle manufacturers in Britain, which together held 80 percent of the domestic market.

Tube Investments consolidated all production at Nottingham from 1961.

Raleigh merged with Moulton in 1967, which confirmed its position as the largest bicycle manufacturer in the world. By this time the Nottingham site spanned 64 acres, and 70 percent of production was exported to 140 countries.

Raleigh was the only major British producer of mopeds, but abandoned the market to foreign rivals such as Honda in 1969.

Raleigh had a 67 percent share of the British cycle market in 1972, while foreign imports had a mere nine percent share.

Cycle sales in America boomed in the early 1970s, and Raleigh cycles, with their reputation for high quality, were in high demand. As a result, Raleigh cycle sales rose 55 percent between 1970 and 1971, leaving the company struggling to keep up with demand. Raleigh employed 8,800 people by 1975.

Ian Phillipps was appointed chairman in 1974. The finance director informed him that the Nottingham site was “the biggest white elephant in Britain”. Phillips reduced a product line of 7,000 different bicycles to around 1,000.

Raleigh had a production capacity of two million cycles a year at Nottingham in 1979, and employed 7,500. Together with other factories both in Britain and overseas it produced a total of four million cycles annually. 60 percent of British production was exported and it had a 60 percent share of its domestic market. It remained the world’s largest bicycle manufacturer.

Foreign rivals had captured a 36 percent share of the British cycle market by 1981, and Raleigh’s share had declined to 45 percent. The company’s workforce had been reduced to 4,000. Raleigh was no longer vertically-integrated, and instead imported all of its components apart from bike frames.

Following three years of consecutive losses and after reducing the workforce to 1,800, Tube Investments sold Raleigh to Derby International for £18 million in 1987. Derby’s timing proved fortuitous as mountain bikes began to enjoy strong sales growth.

Peugeot sold its loss-making bicycle arm to Derby in 1989.

The lease on the Nottingham factory expired in 2003. Raleigh relocated production to the Far East, which reduced manufacturing costs by 25 percent. The bikes are still designed in Nottingham. The company sold 850,000 bikes and employed 430 staff in 2011.

Raleigh was sold to Accell for £62 million in 2012.

Hospitality

Game for a go: Dave & Buster’s

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Bass was one of the largest hospitality companies in mid-1990s Britain. The company had successfully introduced popular chain pubs such as All Bar One and O’Neills earlier in the decade.

Dave & Buster’s was a burger bar/video game arcade hybrid. Bass opened its first D&B in Solihull in the West Midlands in 1997. A second outlet was opened in Bristol in 1998 at a cost of £12 million. The outlets were large (40,000 to 60,000 square feet) and located in out of town locations.

A third outlet was scheduled to open in Thurrock, Essex, but never did. Bass had also explored sites in Croydon and Leeds.

Bass did not invent the D&B concept, and merely held the UK franchise. Bass withdrew from its franchise agreement in 2000 and closed the two outlets. The chain still exists in its native America.

Food

Worth their salt: a history of Cerebos

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Cerebos became the largest producer of salt in the world, and introduced the successful Bisto gravy brand to Britain. Cerebos salt remains a leading brand in France, South Africa and Australia.

Cerebos acquired a number of consumer food brands in Britain, including Sharwood’s, Saxa salt, Paxo stuffing, Scott’s Porage Oats and Atora suet.

George Weddell introduces Cerebos
George Weddell (1855 – 1916) was born at Kelso in the Scottish borders. He relocated to Newcastle upon Tyne from 1879 and established a reputation as a well-respected chemist.

Weddell was appointed managing director of the pharmacy subsidiary of Mawson & Swan. The firm was controlled by Joseph Swan (1828 – 1914), who had invented the incandescent light bulb in 1880.

Weddell developed a new pourable table salt in the late nineteenth century. By increasing the phosphate content to three percent the salt was less prone to absorb atmospheric moisture. A partnership was formed, Mawson, Swan & Weddell, in order to manufacture the new salt. Branded as “Cerebos”, the product was marketed for its healthful properties and quickly gained sales, particularly at the premium end of the market.

Cerebos helped to popularise the idea of a refined packaged salt, at a time when the product was normally sold in blocks which contained impurities.

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The business was registered as a company, Cerebos Ltd, in 1894. The company had a share capital of £250,000 (£24 million in 2014).

A factory was established in France in order to supply the Continental market in 1901.

Cerebos acquired the Greatham Salt and Brine Works near Hartlepool from Furness Withy for £33,500 (£3.2m in 2014) in 1904. Company headquarters were relocated from Newcastle to the newly-acquired site.

Saxa was launched as a lower-cost sister brand to Cerebos salt from 1909.

Bisto gravy powder, a mixture of salt, corn flour and caramel colouring, was introduced in 1910. It quickly became the second highest-selling product after Cerebos salt.

500 to 600 workers were employed at Greatham by 1916.

William Henry Collins grows the business
William Henry Collins (1873 – 1947) had entered the company as a salt loader in 1893. He worked his way up to sales manager of the London business. He was appointed chairman and managing director of Cerebos in 1918. Much of the subsequent growth of the business was credited to Collins.

The Middlewich Salt Company was acquired for £30,000 in 1919 in order to reduce the company’s dependence on a single manufacturing site.

The Greatham factory canteen in 1924
The Greatham factory canteen in 1924

The Greatham factory was one of the best-equipped food factories in the world by 1930. By this time Bisto outsold Cerebos salt, but both brands were household names, and Saxa continued to grow in popularity.

Millions of packets of salt were sold every month by 1937.

The French subsidiary was sold in 1938-9.

John Crampton of Wythenshawe in Manchester was acquired in 1939. Established in 1849, it originally specialised in pepper and spices, but by this time also produced Paxo, the leading brand of stuffing in Britain. Cerebos improved the distribution of Crampton products.

The Greatham factory employed nearly 1,000 people, mostly women, by 1944.

A subsidiary was established in South Africa in 1945.

William Henry Collins died in 1947 with an estate valued at £955,758. Throughout his life he had made charitable donations to the value of hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Cerebos expands at home and overseas
Cerebos was the largest producer of domestic salt in the world by 1953.

A large new factory was established in Melbourne, Australia to produce Bisto and salt from 1953. Klembro, the manufacturer of Gravox gravy powder, was also acquired.

A&R Scott of Fife was acquired in a deal which valued the company at £600,000 in 1953. Best known for the Porage Oats brand, it was the largest producer of porridge in Britain, and employed 500 people.

Cerebos acquired Brand & Co, the Vauxhall-based producer of A1 sauce, for over £4 million (£83.1 million in 2014) in 1959.

Cerebos was valued at £40 million by 1961. By this time the company controlled the majority of the British salt-processing industry, and was the largest salt producer in the world. Greatham was the largest domestic saltworks in Britain. The company operated twelve factories in Britain, as well as plants in Ireland, Australia, France and Africa.

Canada Vinegars of Toronto was acquired in 1961 to provide a Canadian manufacturing and distribution base for Cerebos products.

Brand’s Chicken Essence had established strong sales in Asia by the early 1960s.

A factory for producing Cerebos and Saxa salt was established in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 1962.

Sharwood of Sittingbourne in Kent, best known for Green Label chutney, was acquired for £1 million (£18.7 million in 2014) in 1962.

Hugon & Co of Manchester was acquired for £8.5 million (£159 million in 2014) in 1963. Hugon produced Atora, the leading suet brand in Britain.

A G Linfield, best known for Chesswood canned mushrooms, was acquired in 1963. Production was relocated to Vauxhall.

Diversification away from the core lines of salt, Bisto and Paxo had a negative impact on profit margins. Economies were found by rationalising production. The Sittingbourne factory was closed in 1966, and the Vauxhall factory was closed in 1967, with all production relocated to Greatham. Cerebos realised £900,000 from the sale of the Vauxhall site.

Overseas operations contributed to 15 percent of profits by 1968.

Cerebos enjoyed a strong reputation with retailers, and employed an efficient computer-controlled distribution network, with 16 depots. However its profits were stagnating. Salt suffered from low growth, and many of its other product lines, such as porridge, were declining.

Acquisition by Rank Hovis McDougall
Rank Hovis McDougall (RHM), one of the largest food producers in Britain, acquired Cerebos for £61 million (£944.8 million in 2014) in 1968. The merger created a group with a market capitalization of over £180 million (£2.8 billion in 2014). It was a gentlemanly merger, completed after two months of negotiations.

An article in The Sunday Times argued that RHM had paid “£10 million too much” for “brand leaders in virtually stagnant or declining markets; plus a lot of also-rans”. Scott’s had lost its market leadership in porridge to Quaker Oats and Ready Brek. Brand’s meat and fish paste sales were dwarfed by Shippam’s and Sutherland, and Crosse & Blackwell, Epicure and Marela led Sharwood in pickle sales.

Salt manufacturing was centralised at Middlewich in Cheshire from 1970. RHM invested heavily at the Greatham plant, and it was their largest food factory. Its principal products were, in order, canned soups, Brand’s Essence of Chicken and Beef, Brand’s pastes and spreads and Sharwood’s. 30 million cans of soup were produced every year.

Production of Atora suet and Chesswood mushrooms were transferred to Greatham in 1974. The increase in production saw 1,000 people employed at the site.

Saxa displaced Cerebos as the highest-selling salt in Britain from the 1970s onwards.

Bisto instant gravy granules, the first of its kind in the world, were launched in 1976.

RHM sold the Canadian subsidiary to Campbell’s Soup in 1979.

RHM sold A&R Scott to Quaker Oats in 1982.

RHM established a separate subsidiary, Cerebos Pacific, to handle its growing Asian sales in 1982. Brand’s Chicken Essence contributed to 84 percent of Asian sales.

RHM sold a 30 percent stake in Cerebos Pacific in 1984.

RMH divested Cerebos South Africa in the 1980s.

RHM sold its 70 percent stake in Cerebos Pacific to Suntory of Japan for £186 million in 1990.

460 people were employed at the Middlewich site in 1991.

The 18-acre Greatham site was closed with the loss of 180 jobs in 2001.

RHM was acquired by Premier Foods for £1.2 billion in 2007.

Saxa, Bisto, Sharwood, Paxo and Atora all lead their respective categories in Britain. Cerebos salt remains popular in France, Australia and South Africa, and is still sold in Britain.