The Ross Group was a British food company founded in Grimsby, England in 1920.
The Ross brand remains prominent in the retail frozen fish market. David Ross, the co-founder and significant shareholder in mobile telephone retailer The Carphone Warehouse, is the grandson of J Carl Ross.
Originally a small family-owned fish merchanting company, Ross diversified into trawling, fish processing, and later into food processing in general, expanding into factory farming to become the largest chicken producer in Europe by 1962 via a series of takeovers.[1] The company bought out rival Young's in 1959 and, after a series of takeovers and mergers and de-mergers, forms part of what is now Young's Bluecrest, the UK's largest company in the frozen fish sector. The company's history is also Grimsby's industrial history.
History
Beginnings
The company was registered as Thomas Ross Ltd in 1920 in Grimsby. In 1929, Carl Ross became chairman and managing director when his father retired.
By the outbreak of World War II, Thomas Ross Ltd operated fish merchanting branches in