Origins
In 1871, Thomas Lipton (1848–1931) of Glasgow, Scotland, used his small savings to open a shop; by the 1880s the business had grown to more than 200 stores.[5] In 1929, the Lipton grocery retail business was one of the companies that merged with Home and Colonial Stores, Maypole Dairy Company, Vyes & Boroughs, Templetons and Galbraiths & Pearks to form a food group with more than 3,000 shops. The group traded in the High Street under various names, but was registered on the UK stock market as Allied Suppliers; Allied Stores was originally formed in 1929 to act as the group's purchasing arm. Lipton's became a supermarket chain focused on small towns. Allied was acquired by Argyll Foods in 1982; the supermarket business was rebranded as Presto during the 1980s.
Development
After opening his shop Thomas Lipton began travelling the world for new items to stock. Tea, historically a rare and expensive luxury, doubled in sales from £40 million in the late 1870s to £80 million by the mid-1880s. In 1890 Lipton purchased tea gardens in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, from where he packaged and sold the first Lipton tea.[6] He arranged packaging and shipping at low cost, and sold his tea in packets by the pound (454g), half-pound (227g), and quarter-pound (113g), with the advertising slogan: "Direct from the tea gardens to the teapot." Lipton teas were an immediate success in the United States.[5]
The Lipton tea business was acquired by consumer goods company Unilever in a number of separate transactions, starting with the purchase of the United States and Canadian Lipton business in 1938. The company owned 12% of the Lipton holding company, Allied Suppliers, a retail holding company, but had 33.7% of the voting rights. In 1972, Unilever sold its shares in Allied Supplies to Sir James Goldsmith's Cavenham Foods group for £10.4 million, on the understanding they could buy Lipton's tea business back at a price agree by an independent adjucator. The fee set was £18.5 million which Unilever completed the purchase of in August 1972.[7][8][9][10][11]
In 1991, Unilever created a joint venture with PepsiCo, the Pepsi Lipton Tea Partnership (PLTP), for the marketing of ready to drink teas in North America.[12] This was followed in 2003 by a second joint venture, Pepsi Lipton International (PLI), covering many non-North American markets.[13] PLI was expanded in September 2007 to include a number of large European and other markets.[14] PepsiCo and Unilever each control 50 percent of the shares of these joint ventures.[15] In May 2007, Unilever became the first company to commit to sourcing all tea in a sustainable manner.[16] Working with the Rainforest Alliance, an international environmental NGO, Unilever, announced all Lipton Yellow Label tea bags sold in Western Europe would be certified by 2010 and all Lipton tea bags sold globally by 2015.[17] Lipton's own tea estates were among the first to be certified.
In 2011, PETA criticized Unilever for conducting and funding experiments on rabbits, pigs and other animals in an attempt to make human health claims about the tea's ingredients. According to the animal rights organization, Unilever decided to end the practice after receiving more than 40,000 appeals from PETA supporters and days before PETA made plans to launch its "Lipton CruelTEA" campaign.[23] Unilever no longer tests their products on animals unless required to by governments as part of their regulatory requirements.[24]
Unilever reached an agreement in November 2021 to sell the majority of its tea business to private equity firm CVC Capital Partners for €4.5 billion.[25] This included the Lipton brand except where Unilever retained its use for tea in India, Nepal, and Indonesia, for ready to drink teas globally, and for soup mixes in North America.[26] The sale was completed in July 2022, with the new company named ‘Lipton Teas and Infusions’.[3]
Due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Lipton Teas and Infusions decided in August 2022 to completely withdraw from the Russian market and stop the production and sale of Lipton tea.[27]
