J. Lyons and Co., Greenford

Post World War I, the company wished to expand its cakes business on site, but concluded that to do so it needed to find a secondary site close by that would allow sufficient capacity to both house the tea and coffee business, as well as allow for potential expansion of cake production.

Post the war, industry had been developing along the Grand Union Canal, north-westward from Brentford Dock to the then village of Greenford Green in Middlesex.

[1] In 1919, Lyons bought a site which straddled the Grand Union Canal, connecting it directly to the tea warehouses of London Docks and the River Thames.

The extensive onsite railway infrastructure allowed precise positioning of heavy raw goods into the factory, as well as the extraction of finished product.

Lyons bought their own steam shunters to move wagons between the GWR exchange sidings and the factory system.

[2] By the late 1920s the Greenford factory handled over 446 long tons (453,000 kg) of tea per week, distributing to over 200,000 outlets throughout the country by road and rail.

On hygiene production grounds, there were no connecting passages between the two facilities, except via the main entrances on Oldfield Lane North.

[1] Lyons had purchased a site north of the Grand Union to its existing facility for expansion in the 1930s, but had not used it pre-World War II.

[1] Greenford also produced all of Lyons grocery lines, including: tomato sauce; salad cream; jellies; custard powder and mixes.

[1] This included Ready Brek, created from experimentation by Walter Pitts, factory manager from the Tea division.

In 1995 the tea business was sold in a venture capital-backed Management buyout, under the terms of which the Greenford site was to be vacated.