Henry Palethorpe was born in 1829 in the
Black Country. Setting up business as a
butcher in
Birmingham in the 1850s, he realised that the United States was flooding the United Kingdom market with cheap
bacon and
pork. The high cost of building the new factory saw Palethorpes suffer financial difficulties and in 1969 the business was bought by the Bibby Agricultural Group. In 1980 the business again changed hands being bought by Haverhill Meat Products, a joint venture company owned equally by J Sainsbury and Canada Packers. In 1985 J Sainsbury produced the world's first Mycoprotein (later to become Quorn) product, a Savoury Pie produced at its Palethorpes factory The Company ceased manufacturing and selling Palethorpes branded products in 1986 in order to concentrate on its own label business. The Palethorpes brand name was reborn briefly in the mid-1990s as a value brand for Sainsbury's pies and pasties, although it is no longer used. Palethorpes became a part of
Northern Foods, at that time the UK's largest manufacturer of meat and savoury products, in 1991. It became part of the Chilled Foods division known as Premium Savoury Products. In January 2007 Northern Foods sold most of its Savoury Pastry business to Vision Capital; this included Pork Farms, Bowyers and Palethorpes. Now rebranded by Vision Capital as Addo Food Group, the Market Drayton plant presently employs 700 people. The company supplies foods to leading retailers to be sold under their own brand names. Customer companies include
Asda and Sainsbury's. In 2021, the merger of Winterbotham Darby and Addo Food Group formed the Compleat Food Group, which has taken over the Palethorpes brand and assets. ==References==