J A & P Holland

About J A & P Holland

J A & P Holland was a toffee and caramel manufacturer at Southport in Lancashire that traded as Arthur Holland. Grace's Guide dates the business to 1927 and its incorporation as a public company to March 1953, when the directors were John Arthur Holland senior, John Arthur Holland junior and Peter Holland; the firm diversified through some two dozen acquisitions from 1960, James Goldsmith's Cavenham Foods bought the shares it did not already own in 1965, and by about 1967 the business had become part of Cavenham Confectionery.^[1] It is recorded here because it first produced, in 1963, the chewy sweet renamed Chewits after the takeover, which is the origination row on brand/chewits.^[2]

The diversification that ended the family's control ran from 1960, when Holland's began buying other confectioners: Fillerys Toffees, Walter's "Palm" Toffee, Ewbanks, S. Parkinson of Doncaster, Coq d'Or Chocolates and the Casket Confectionery Co, followed in 1961 by the Harper Paper Group, with Granada Theatres investing in the enlarged group; twenty-three acquisitions fell in three months of 1961 alone.^[1] The Daily Mail had called Holland's the world's biggest toffee manufacturer, and by then it stretched from boiled sweets, liquorice and chocolate into paper, printing, packaging and plastics.^[3] No dividend was paid after 1963, and in January 1965 Carr and Co, which Cavenham controlled, bid for the family's holding; Cavenham Foods took the remaining shares that July.^[1] In Wikipedia's account of that reorganisation, Carr and Co sold its Carlisle factory to raise cash, bought Cavenham's holdings in Carsons and then Holland's itself, and renamed itself Cavenham Foods, which is how the group came to be listed in London.^[3] The Liverpool Echo reported in April 1966 that the chairman Jack Holland and his brother Peter, the managing director, were leaving Arthur Holland Confectionery Ltd, ending the family's connection with the firm.^[1] About 1967 Cavenham gathered its confectionery businesses into Cavenham Confectionery, whose brands were Hollands, Carsons and Parkinsons; that subsidiary was merged with the confectionery arm of France's Source Perrier the same year, was bought out by its management in 1981 and renamed Famous Names, and was trading as Elizabeth Shaw Ltd by about 1987.^[4][5]