Cavenham Foods was one of the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

's largest food processing businesses.

History

The company was founded by Sir

James Goldsmith Sir James Michael Goldsmith (26 February 1933 – 18 July 1997) was a French-British financier, tycoon''Billionaire: The Life and Times of Sir James Goldsmith'' by Ivan Fallon and politician who was a member of the Goldsmith family. His contr ...

in 1965 when he bought up a series of bakeries. In 1971 Cavenham acquired the Bovril Company but then sold most of its dairies and

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...

n operations to finance further take overs. These take-overs came quickly and included

Allied Suppliers Home and Colonial Stores was once one of the United Kingdom's largest retail chains. Its formation of a vast chain of retail stores in the late 1920s is seen as the first step in the development of a UK food retail market dominated by a small num ...

(a British supermarket business) for £86m in 1972, the Grand Union Company (an American supermarket business) for £62m in 1973,

Colonial Stores Colonial Stores was a chain grocery stores once found throughout much of the South. Most were transformed to Big Star Markets in the 1970s and later most became Harris Teeter or A&P. History David Pender Grocery Company The chain evolved ...

(another American supermarket business) for £133m in 1978 and J. Weingarten Inc. (also an American supermarket business) in 1979. Goldsmith divested most of his investments in the early 1980s. The main British part of the business, Allied Suppliers, went to

Argyll Foods Argyll Foods plc was the fourth biggest supermarket operator in the United Kingdom, through its acquisitions of a number of smaller supermarkets. In 1987 the company acquired Safeway Inc.'s UK subsidiary and in 1996 it changed its name to Saf ...

."Obituary: James Gulliver"
''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

''. 23 September 1996.

References

{{reflist British companies established in 1965 Food manufacturers of the United Kingdom Food manufacturers based in London