[2] Once quarries were exhausted he turned them into landfill waste sites, the profits invested in cotton businesses with property assets.

By 1977 a majority of the firm's activity was property development, and by the early 1980s that was predominantly new-build, industrial units and out-of-town retail stores.

[26] Manchester City Council still had a stake in the canal but now faced a conflict of interest as both a local planning authority and shareholder.

[25][24] In 1987, Peel submitted a planning application for a shopping centre development on land attached to the Manchester Ship Canal, adjacent to the M63, now the M60, in Trafford.

[9][13][12] In 2007, Peel obtained planning permission to develop a 37 acres (15 ha) site on the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal in Salford.

The development would double the size and include more TV studio and production space as well as shops, offices, a 330-bed hotel and 1,400 homes (Manchester Waters).

In 2016, it cut its stake in the film studio operator from 58% to 39%, and then sold the remainder to Leon Bressler's PW Real Estate Fund.

Phase One included a 21.5 MW biomass facility and 19-turbine wind farm and was opened in January 2017 by Andrew Percy, Minister for the Northern Powerhouse.

Its ultimate parent company is the Isle of Man-based Tokenhouse Ltd.[73] Campaigners objected to an LNG terminal Peel proposed for Hunterston Parc, Largs.

The scheme included a combined cycle gas turbine power station; deep water port; facilities for oil rig decommissioning; a site for the recycling and storage of plastics, and dredging 2.4 million cubic metres of seabed.

[73] In 2015, Peel established a biomass terminal at Liverpool's Gladstone Dock for wood pellet imports from wetland forests in the Southern US.

Documents revealed Salford Council, IGas Energy, Greater Manchester Police and Peel were sharing intelligence during anti-fracking protests at Barton Moss.

[82] In 2009, following redundancies (layoffs) at Peel's Marine Terminals Ltd subsidiary in Dublin, and eight weeks of industrial action, strikers seized the cargo handling company's control room.

In co-ordinated action, Dutch FNV Union occupied the headquarters of sister subsidiary BG Freight's head office in Rotterdam.

It was alleged against Peel's subsidiary Marine Terminals Ltd that there was no appropriate planning, instruction, communication and supervision of the method to insert a missing deck lock under the bottom container in the stack.

Residents were particularly concerned about the situation when the M6 Thelwall Viaduct had to be closed for maintenance, leaving no alternative route locally across the canal.

[85][86] In his 2019 book Who Owns England, Guy Shrubsole describes Peel as one of the 'secretive' companies that "hoards England's land" and has made significant impacts, good and bad, on the environment and people's lives: Peel Holdings operates behind the scenes, quietly acquiring land and real estate, cutting billion-pound deals and influencing numerous planning decisions.