Lipton

Lipton is a brand of tea currently owned by Unilever.

History

Lipton was created at the end of the 19th century by a grocer, Sir Thomas Lipton, in Glasgow, Scotland. In 1893, he established the Thomas J Lipton Co., a tea packing company with its headquarters and factory in Hoboken, New Jersey. Lipton teas were an immediate success in the US. Thomas Lipton was knighted by Queen Victoria, who made him Sir Thomas Lipton in 1898 at the age of forty-eight.

In 1929, the Lipton grocery retail business was one of the companies that merged with Home and Colonial Stores to form a food group with over 3,000 stores. The group traded as Home and Colonial Stores until 1961 when it took the name of Allied Stores.

Lipton's became a supermarket chain focused on small towns, before Allied's 1982 acquisition by Argyll Group: the supermarket business was rebranded as Presto during the 1980s.

Meanwhile, the Lipton tea business was acquired by consumer goods company Unilever in a number of separate transactions, starting with the purchase of the US and Canadian Lipton business in 1938 and completed in 1972 when Unilever bought the remainder of the global Lipton business.

In 1991, Unilever created a first joint venture with PepsiCo, the Pepsi Lipton Partnership, for the marketing of ready to drink (bottled and canned) teas in North America. This was followed in 2003 by a second joint venture,...
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