Tetley

For other uses, see Tetley (disambiguation).
Tetley
Private
Industry Food
Founded 1837 (1837)
Founder Joseph and Edward Tetley
Headquarters England
Area served
 Worldwide
Products Tea
Parent Tata Global Beverages
Website tetley.com

Tetley is an English beverage manufacturer, and the largest tea company in the United Kingdom and Canada, and the second largest in the United States by volume. Tetley's manufacturing and distribution business is spread across forty countries, and sells over sixty branded tea bags. Since 2000 it is a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Global Beverages (formerly Tata Tea), the second largest manufacturer of tea in the world after Unilever.[1][2]

History

Tetley tea canister from Canada

In 1822, brothers Joseph and Edward Tetley sold salt from a pack horse in Yorkshire, England.[3] They started to sell tea and were so successful they set up as "Joseph Tetley & Co." tea merchants in 1837.[4] Relocating to London in 1856, they set up as "Joseph Tetley & Company, Wholesale Tea Dealers".[5]

In 1952, in an early example of cross promotion, Petula Clark's single "Anytime Is Tea Time Now" was used to advertise Tetley on Radio Luxembourg.

Tetley was the first company to sell tea in tea-bags in the United Kingdom in 1953.[6] In 1989, following extensive consumer tests establishing Britons' preferences, Tetley launched the round tea bag.[7]

The Tetley Group was created in July 1995, as a result of a buy in management buy out, when a group of investors bought the worldwide beverage business from Allied Domecq.[8] The Tetley Group was bought by India's Tata Group in February 2000, for £271 million.[9]

It was one of the largest overseas acquisitions by an Indian company at that time. Tata Group is one of India's largest business conglomerates, comprising more than one hundred companies, including Tata Global Beverages. The acquisition has helped Tata's business ambitions to hold a global tea company.

As India reduces import duties on tea, Tata Global Beverages has offset its reduced share of the domestic market by gains in Europe and North America. In 2014, Columbia Law School[10] and The Guardian[11] reported that some of Tetley's tea is harvested by workers who do not receive the minimum wage in India.

In a statement placed on its website, Tetley's parent company, Tata Global Beverages, announced it had "appointed legal advisors to verify compliances by independent review. The legal advisors will also appoint and commission an independent third party Solidaridad to make an assessment into the living and working conditions of the workers at the APPL plantations.".[12]

The company has claimed that APPL is not used in Tetley tea internationally, and that it has supplied only one small shipment of Assam tea for use in Tetley in India in the last three years. In October 2014, Unicef announced that they are working with tea companies and with the Ethical Tea Partnership (ETP) to tackle child exploitation in Indian tea communities. The three year program is funded by a number of advocacy groups, Tata Global Beverages and Tesco.[13]

Products

See also

References

  1. ↑ tata.com : Tetley's fiscal show to jazz up Tata Tea results Archived 11 November 2006 at the Wayback Machine.
  2. ↑ "Tata Global Beverages". www.tata.com. Retrieved 21 March 2015.
  3. ↑ "History of Tetley Tea". Retrieved 25 April 2008.
  4. ↑ Tata Global Beverages - Brand Detail
  5. ↑ "Error". tetleyusa.com.
  6. ↑ "BrandsTell. Tetley's history". brandstell.com.
  7. ↑ "A Brief History of the Teabag - The Tetley Tea Academy". Retrieved 7 November 2016.
  8. ↑ "Tata Global Beverages Services Ltd.: Private Company Information - Businessweek". Businessweek.com.
  9. ↑ tata.com : Tetley purchase at £ 271 million Archived 11 November 2006 at the Wayback Machine.
  10. ↑ "The More Things Change... (The World Bank, Tata and Enduring Abuses on India's Tea Plantations)" (PDF). web.law.columbia.edu. Columbia Law School, The Human Rights Institute. January 2014. Retrieved 6 April 2014.
  11. ↑ Chamberlain Sonitpur, Gethin (1 March 2014). "India's tea firms urged to act on slave trafficking after girls freed". theguardian.com. The Observer. Retrieved 1 March 2014.
  12. ↑ http://www.tataglobalbeverages.com/sustainability/statement-on-independent-assessment-of-appl-plantations
  13. ↑ "Tea giants join partnership to tackle child exploitation in Indian tea communities".
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