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Chock
Full o' Nuts Corporation
Sol
Cafe Ltd
Sol
Tenco Ltd
In
1964 J. Lyons & Co acquired an
interest in the Chock Full o' Nuts
Corporation in USA from the Beechnut
Company. In July 1964 this operation
decided to acquire three other coffee
blenders: the Old Judge Coffee Company
(based in St Louis, Missouri), Nash's (in
St Paul, Minnesota, and Boscul (in Camden,
New Jersey). With these acquisitions Chock
Full o' Nuts now traded in a total of 30
American states. Old Judge had the highest
coffee sales in the St Louis area. On 1
April 1965 Lyons and Chock Full o' Nuts
formed a new company Sol Cafe Limited,
with an issued equity capital of
£1000,000 with Lyons holding the
controlling shares. On 2 July 1969 the
Chock Full o' Nuts shareholding was bought
by Lyons and thus Sol Cafe Limited became
a wholly-owned subsidiary of J. Lyons
& Co. The company concentrated on
instant coffee in the UK and became one of
the major suppliers to supermarkets under
their own labels.
By 1970 Lyons had captured 80 per cent of the UK market in
private-label instant coffee, which itself comprised 20 per cent of the whole instant
coffee market in the UK.
In
March 1982 Lyons acquired from the
Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta the issued
share capital of Ibenco (Great Britain)
Ltd, subsequently named Tenco (UK) Ltd. With headquarters in Linden, New Jersey, the Tenco
Division reported to the Coca-Cola Foods
Division and had manufacturing,
warehousing and distribution facilities at
six locations in North America. It was the
largest supplier of private-label instant
coffee and tea in the United States and
had one of only four factories producing
high-margin decaffeinated coffee. The
Tenco Division of the Coca-Cola Company
(UK branch) was managed by Charles Druce, who continued as managing director of Tenco (UK) Ltd. An uncomplicated business, Tenco purchased spray-dried
coffee powder from countries of origin and
packaged it in jars and cartons (labelled
in accordance with customers'
requirements) from an unpretentious factory in Ilderton Road, Peckham.
Spray-dried powder was sometimes
agglomerated by moistening a falling
curtain of milled powder with steam, then
drying it so that it stuck together in
lumps. The linchpin of Tenco UK's
operation was the exclusive supply of
packaged coffee to the Co-operative
Wholesale Society, a contract which had
existed since the late 1960s and which
accounted for 60 per cent of packaging
volume (the Peckham factory also packed
and sold a non-dairy creamer which was
supplied by Premier Brands Ltd).
By
now there was a growing demand from
principal private-label customers for better products, generally in the image of
Nescafe coffees. Sol Cafe had built up a
processing capability over several years
and, although the firm tended to buy
coffee powder, in the years immediately
before the Tenco acquisition the basic
equipment and expertise were retained at
Greenford. Techniques developed by Sol
Cafe increasingly produced soluble coffees
at least equal to the brand leaders; this
enabled the company to expand its market
share to about 18 per cent by 1984.
Instant coffee production was supported by a vastly improved packaging
facility at Greenford. One of the benefits
of acquiring Tenco UK was the injection of
capital plant into the production area at
an economic cost and over a short
time-scale. For example, one renovated
fast jar-filling line was commissioned at
Greenford in 1982 at a cost of
£500,000. It was supplemented by two
further lines from the Tenco site at
Peckham in mid-1982. Acquisition of these
lines and other plant made the operation
flexible enough to handle packaging orders
within a single-shift working pattern.
There were associated cuts in the
workforce within the production area, with
no loss of output; and direct packaging
labour per unit of throughput was reduced
by 40 per cent.
Sol-Tenco's
instant coffee trade continued to lie
mainly in own-label products, but small
amounts of its Gold Roast brand were sold through 'cash and carry' outlets. Green
coffee was bought from European Community
traders or from representatives of traders
in the country of origin. Ready-made
spray-dried or powdered coffee was also
bought from Brazil, Columbia, India and
Salvador. Decaffeinated beans for instant
coffee manufacture were obtained from France or Germany by a
German company, Coffein Compagnie. Sol-Tenco
also bought small quantities of
decaffeinated coffee powder from Brazil
and supplies of freeze-dried coffee from
Germany.
By February
1994, after Allied-Lyons had acquired the
Pedro Domecq sherry group the instant
coffee business had fallen to 11 per cent
of the UK market and it was sold to Kraft
Jacobs Suchard, part of the Philip Morris empire.
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