Tetley is an English beverage manufacturer founded in 1837 in

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ) is an area of Northern England which was History of Yorkshire, historically a county. Despite no longer being used for administration, Yorkshire retains a strong regional identity. The county was named after its county town, the ...

. It is the largest company of tea in the United Kingdom and

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, and the second-largest in the United States by volume. Since 2000, Tetley has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Consumer Products (formerly Tata Global Beverages), making it the second-largest manufacturer of teas in the world, after

Unilever Unilever PLC () is a British multinational consumer packaged goods company headquartered in London, England. It was founded on 2 September 1929 following the merger of Dutch margarine producer Margarine Unie with British soap maker Lever B ...

History

In 1822, brothers Joseph and Edward Tetley sold salt from a pack horse in

Huddersfield Huddersfield is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees in West Yorkshire, England. It is the administrative centre and largest settlement in the Kirklees district. The town is in the foothills of the Pennines. The River Holme's confl ...

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. They started to sell tea and were so successful they set up as "Joseph Tetley & Co." tea merchants in 1837. Relocating to London in 1856, they formed "Joseph Tetley & Company, Wholesale Tea Dealers", in partnership with Joseph Ackland. In 1952, in an early example of cross promotion,

Petula Clark Sally "Petula" Clark (born 15 November 1932) is a British singer, actress, and songwriter. She started her professional career as a child actor, child performer and has had the longest career of any British entertainer, spanning more than 85 y ...

's single "Anytime Is Tea Time Now" was used to advertise Tetley on Radio Luxembourg. Tetley was the first company to sell tea in tea-bags in the United Kingdom in 1953. In 1989, following extensive consumer tests establishing Britons' preferences, Tetley launched the round tea bag. In 1973 the Tetley company was acquired by J. Lyons and Co. to form Lyons-Tetley. Following mergers, Lyons became part of Allied Lyons and then Allied Domecq. The Tetley Group was created in July 1995, as a result of a buy in management buy out, when a group of investors bought the worldwide beverage business from Allied Domecq. The Tetley Group was bought by India's

Tata Group The Tata Group () is an Indian multinational conglomerate group of companies headquartered in Mumbai. Established in 1868, it is India's largest business conglomerate, with products and services in over 160 countries, and operations in 100 c ...

in February 2000, for £271 million. It was one of the largest overseas acquisitions by an Indian company at that time. The

is one of

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

's largest business conglomerates, comprising more than one hundred companies, including Tata Consumer Products. The acquisition has helped Tata's business ambitions to hold a global tea company. As

reduced import duties on tea, Tata Consumer Products offset its reduced share of the domestic market by gains in

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and

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. In April 2014,

Columbia Law School Columbia Law School (CLS) is the Law school in the United States, law school of Columbia University, a Private university, private Ivy League university in New York City. The school was founded in 1858 as the Columbia College Law School. The un ...

and ''The Guardian'' reported that some of Tetley's tea is harvested by workers who do not receive the minimum wage in India. In a statement placed on its website, Tetley's parent company, Tata Consumer Products, announced it had "appointed legal advisors to verify compliances by independent review. The legal advisors will also appoint and commission an independent third party Solidaridad to make an assessment into the living and working conditions of the workers at the APPL plantations (Amalgamated Plantations Private Limited)." The company has claimed that tea from APPL plantations is not used in Tetley tea internationally, and that APPL has supplied only one small shipment of Assam tea for use in Tetley in

in the last three years. In October 2014, UNICEF announced that they are working with tea companies and with the Ethical Tea Partnership (ETP) to tackle child exploitation in Indian tea communities. The three-year program is funded by a number of advocacy groups, Tata Consumer Products, and Tesco.

Operations

Tetley's manufacturing and distribution business operates in forty countries, selling over sixty branded tea bags. In the early days of Tetley's operations, the company was solely a distributor of tea as it did not have any plantations to call its own, which meant that the company had to buy tea leaves through auctions. This led to the final product having a blend of 40 different types of tea from over 10,000 tea estates all over the world. Its premium packaging and quality helped it gain tremendous amounts of market share. By 1990, with a yearly production of 20 billion teabags, Tetley had gained the title of the second largest tea brand in the world after

Lipton Lipton is a brand named after its founder, Sir Thomas Lipton, Tom Lipton, who started an eponymous grocery retail business in the United Kingdom in 1871. The brand was used for various consumer goods sold in Lipton stores, including tea from 1 ...

. It was only after the acquisition of Tetley by the then Tata Tea, that the company's supply chains were finally consolidated with those of Tata Tea. This led to most of Tetley's tea leaves now originating from Tata's plantations across India and Sri Lanka.

References

External links

* {{Tata Group 1856 establishments in England Food and drink companies established in 1856 Tea companies of the United Kingdom Tea brands in the United Kingdom Yorkshire cuisine 2000 mergers and acquisitions British subsidiaries of foreign companies Tata Consumer Products British companies established in 1856

History

Operations

See also

References

External links