Allied Suppliers
1929 Home and Colonial Stores formed Allied Suppliers as a purchasing company for various tea interests; it acquired the tea blending and packing interests of Home and Colonial Stores, Lipton, Maypole Dairy Co, Meadow Dairy Co and Pearks Dairies and would carry on business as warehousemen and provision merchants[1]
1930 Allied Stores was registered to acquire Home and Colonial Stores, Meadow Dairy Co, Maypole Dairy Co, Pearks Dairies and the International Tea Company's Stores and also shares of Lipton Ltd[2] but the merger fell through.
By WWII Allied Suppliers traded through its subsidiaries Liptons Stores, Home and Colonial, Meadow and Pearks, Maypole, Frosts, Cochranes, Masseys, Templetons, Duncans, Hadrians, Williams, Broughs, a total of 3613 stores.
1941 Allied Suppliers had been using a factory in Rouel Road (Bermondsey?) which was bombed. The decision was to find somewhere "safer" to supply products to its many stores. So Allied Suppliers bought T. W. Beach and Sons with factory in Hanworth from its founders.
1961 Allied Suppliers closed the biscuit department of Bilsland Brothers in Glasgow.[3]
1962 Unilever continued to hold a quarter of the shares in the group, albeit with restricted voting rights[4]
1965 Chairman and MD is Malcolm E. Cooper.[5]
1967 From advertisement: Home and Colonial; Lipton; Maypole; Meadow; Pearks; S. Frost and Co (London); Vye and Son (Kent); Buy Wise (Midlands); Hadrian Supply Co, W. Duncan and Broughs (North East); John Williams and Sons and Mark Down (Manchester); Lipton (Scotland), A. Massey and Sons, R. and J. Templeton, Galbraith Stores and A. Cochrane (Scotland).[6]
1972 All the Allied Suppliers stores in the U.K and Eire rebranded under the Lipton title.[7]
1972 Acquired by Cavenham
1982 Argyll Foods acquired Allied Suppliers
The supermarket business was rebranded as Presto during the 1980s.