0144:: 1909 =RARE= Paperclip, advertising St. Ivel Lactic Cheese, bronzed tin

SKU-0144::

1909 -RARE- Paperclip, advertising St. Ivel Lactic Cheese, bronzed tin.

This is a letter clip, paperclip, bill clip, paperholder. It’s a fine desk accessory that may or may not have been part of a desk set (ink well, blotter, pen stand, etc.). Some bore advertising, and so, traveling salesmen handed those out the way we hand out ink pens advertising our products today. They’re collectible. I have about 200 of them and I’ll offer them on eBay gradually. No hurry.

About 2″H 4″L 1¾”W
Weighs: 86g

What ever happened to… St Ivel?
There is still a St Ivel Way in Warmley, Bristol, where a large St Ivel distribution warehouse once stood (now owned by Power Electrics after the company moved from Staple Hill).

In 1893 Shortland Aplin and his partner H. W. Barrett, began to expand their wholesale dairy businesses, which in a few years under the name of Alpin and Barrett Ltd, would become one of the largest producers of fine dairy products in the country.

During the first half of the century, the company’s head office, creamery and factory for making many of the St Ivel products, covered nearly two acres of land at Newton Road, Yeovil.

The St Ivel brand was born in 1901 and applied to a range of their products, even though there is no saint of that name. In fact Ivel was one of the spellings accorded to Yeovil by John Leland in his Itineraries of 1533-46. Nevertheless the brand became well established, nationally famous and included butters, creams and cheeses. Their famous ‘St Ivel Lactic Cheese’ was introduced in 1909.

Aplin and Barrett’s dairy products were many and varied and included such popular brands as Golden Meadow Butter, St Ivel Cream, many varieties of cheese and the uniquely flavoured product St Ivel Lactic Cheese, together with sausages, potted pastes and a variety of milk based foods.

Later Aplin and Barrett were absorbed into the Unigate Group.

St Ivel is a brand of dairy products in the United Kingdom. It began as a subsidiary under the ownership of the Unigate dairy company with most production sites in the south west of England and some in Wales. Most of its brands were bought in 2002 by Dairy Crest following a severe decline in doorstep deliveries of milk – previously a major area of business for owners Unigate.

The spreads division, which included the Gold low-fat brand, manufactured in Kirkby in Merseyside, were bought by Dairy Crest in November 2002 for £86m from Uniq. Uniq had been formed from what was left of Unigate after selling its cream division to Dairy Crest in 2000. When the spreads division had gone as well, Uniq and the former Unigate were barely recognisable.

Dairy Crest axed *St Ivel Gold* following declining sales as shoppers switched to butter spreads. The dairy giant, which has brands including Utterly Butterly, Clover and Country Life, said it stopped manufacturing the range “due to evolving consumer tastes and preferences”.

Hemyock in Devon was the former home of the St Ivel dairy processing plant, formerly where the butter-spreads ‘St Ivel Gold’ and ‘Utterly-Butterly’ were produced before being moved to a factory in the north of England.

The first mechanically operated butter factory in the West of England was started at Mountshayne in 1886 by 4 local farmers, this was later transferred to Millhayes, subsequently becoming part of St. Ivel. It was closed in the 1990s. The site has been re-developed for housing.

Hemyock Milk Factory was a major employer and started collecting and processing milk from farms in 1886 before it ended up as the Unigate UK production centre for St Ivel Gold to satisfy demand for low fat spread.

By 1990 it employed more than 300 people but it closed in 1999 with production moving to Liverpool.

The Cadbury family, of chocolate fame, is said to have originated from Hemyock.

The cream division was bought by Dairy Crest from Unigate/Uniq in July 2000.

St Ivel, being owned by Uniq/Unigate, used to make Shape yoghurts in Wootton Bassett in Wiltshire, before this brand was sold off to Danone for £32m. The factory closed in February 2003, having opened in 1908, and is now the Beaufort Park housing estate after being sold for £19m in August 2004. The factory was demolished in June 2005.

Under the St Ivel name, Dairy Crest makes milk promoted to school-age children with added Omega 3 fatty acids. Robert Wiseman Dairies of Scotland had tried unsuccessfully to buy the milk division of Unigate in 2000.

St Ivel also manufacture Mr Juicy. This can be purchased in a range of flavours, however, the most common one is orange.

St Ivel had other sites in Chichester, Evercreech, Chard, a site scheduled to close 2012 in Minsterley, Shropshire, and St Erth in Cornwall. Cheese was made in Haverfordwest, Carmarthen.

History of Unigate

The company was formed in 1959 by the merger of the UK’s largest dairy products company United Dairies, with Cow & Gate, earlier known as the West Surrey Central Dairy Company, forming Unigate.

On merger, aside from its extensive milk home delivery network, its range of food products included Cow & Gate baby foods (now part of Royal Numico) and Farmer’s Wife cream. It also developed St Ivel cheese spreads and Utterly Butterly.

In 1963 Unigate acquired Midland Counties Dairies, but as milk consumption levelled and then started to decline in the 1960s, it began diversifying into non-dairy businesses. It began by buying up grocery stores and restaurants, and by the 1970s bought supermarket chain Kibby’s, Quids-In clothing shops, Uni-Wash laundrettes, and some Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises. In 1973 it acquired Scot Bowyers, a meat-processing company Scot Bowyers, in 1975 United States-based Italian cheese manufacturer Frigo, and in 1978 US specialty cheesemaker, Gardenia.

In 1977, dairyman John Clement became CEO and chairman. To stop the decline in the dairy business, he sold 75% of its dairy manufacturing businesses to the nationalised company the Milk Marketing Board for £87 million. After paying off debt, Unigate acquired:

1981: moving company Giltspur; Turners Turkeys; US-based Mexican food chain Casa Bonita.

1984: poultry processor, J.P. Wood.

1985: Arlington Motor Holdings and in Colchester Car Auctions, both added to subsidiary Wincanton Transport.

1986: Prufrock, which specialized in southern-style food through the Black-Eyed Pea chain of restaurants.

But the diversification didn’t pay off, and in the late 1980s the project was reversed. By the end of the decade, despite Unigate remaining the UK’s biggest milk supplier, dairy products only made up one third of group turnover. With losses mounting and debt rising, Clement was replaced in both board positions by the end of 1991.

In the following decade, Unigate focused on food and distribution, selling off non-core and unprofitable businesses, which raised £700 million. Half of this came through the £332 million sale of its share in Nutricia, the holding company that owned the Cow & Gate brand. The company also bought brands to supplement its new direction, spending £400 million on French firms Prodipal, a maker of yogurts and desserts, and Vedial, a maker of spreads. In September 1996 Unigate paid £77.25 million for the UK and Italian margarine and spreads business of Kraft Foods International, including Vitalite.

In May 1998 the company attempted an unsuccessful £1.59 billion takeover of diversified conglomerate Hillsdown Holdings. In February 1999 the company did acquire Fisher Quality Foods, a UK supplier of sauces, dressings, and marinades, from the Albert Fisher Group PLC for £43 million. In the meantime, Hillsdown under shareholder pressure had begun a break-up, spinning off its chilled convenience food subsidiary as Terranova. In March 1999 Unigate initiated a hostile £228.5 million takeover bid for Terranova, which was accepted after the bid was raised to £274 million.

But by the late 1990s, the decline in doorstep deliveries and price pressure from supermarkets led to mounting losses, and in 2000 the milk and cheese division was sold to Dairy Crest. On completion of the sale, the company changed its name to Uniq in July 2000. In 2001, it demerged Wincanton, its logistics subsidiary, by way of an initial public offering.

It sold its yoghurt business in 2002 to raise money to concentrate on the convenience foods market. In March 2009 Uniq reached an agreement for the sale of its UK chilled fish business, Pinneys of Scotland, to The Seafood Company Ltd (part of the Foodvest Group).

On 12 July 2011, Greencore announced it intended to buy Uniq. The deal was completed in November 2011, and Uniq is now subsumed within the operations of Greencore.
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