L. Rose & Co

About L. Rose & Co

L. Rose & Co was the Leith firm behind the Rose's brand of lime cordial: Lauchlan Rose set it up in 1865 to supply ships with provisions, including lime juice, patented a way of preserving citrus juice with sugar rather than alcohol in 1867, and opened the first lime juice factory on Commercial Street in Leith in 1868.^[1][2] The limited company, L. Rose & Co. Limited, was incorporated on 21 April 1898 and was dissolved on 3 June 2022 after a members' voluntary winding up; its last registered shareholder was Mondelez UK Holdings & Services Limited.^[3][4][5]

At its 1898 registration it had capital of £150,000, as lime-fruit growers and proprietors of Rose's lime juice and lime juice cordial.^[1] The company bought lime estates in Dominica in the early 1890s — Bath and Elshall in 1891 by Grace's Guide, 1893 by Wikipedia's account — and later made calcium citrate from 1906 and citric acid crystals at Bath Estate from 1921, buying most of the island's limes.^[1][2] Its head office moved from the London docks to St Albans in 1940 after the Blitz, and the lime marmalade it became known for dates from the 1940s.^[1][2] Schweppes, then the largest group of soft-drink makers in Britain, bought the company in August 1957, and Schweppes merged with Cadbury in 1969.^[1][2] In its last years it was a non-trading company filing dormant accounts, with its registered office at Cadbury House in Uxbridge until the liquidators were appointed in October 2019.^[3][5]