Heinz to move HP Sauce from Aston to the Netherlands

Heinz has announced plans to move production of HP Sauce from its factory in Aston to the Netherlands, putting around 125 jobs at risk and ending more than a century of the famous brown sauce being made in Birmingham.

The company announced in May that it intends to switch production to its European sauces factory at Elst, in the Netherlands.

Backlash and a boycott call

The announcement has caused a backlash, with calls for people to boycott Heinz products. Politicians and union officials have criticised the move, especially as the company wants to keep using the image of the Houses of Parliament on its bottles.

The announcement came only weeks after HP launched a campaign to "Save the Proper British Cafe".

Local Labour MP Khalid Mahmood brandished a bottle of HP Sauce during Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons in protest at the plan, and referred to the sauce's popularity with the former Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson.

Heinz takeover

Heinz bought HP Foods, the parent company, from Danone in June 2005. The Office of Fair Trading referred the takeover to the Competition Commission, which approved the £440 million acquisition in April this year.

A Birmingham story

HP Sauce has been part of Birmingham's industrial life since 1899. That year, the sauce's inventor, a Nottingham grocer named Frederick Garton, could not settle a debt with his vinegar suppliers, the Midland Vinegar Company of Aston Cross. Edwin Samson Moore of the vinegar company visited Garton, and the outcome was that Garton sold the name and recipe for HP Sauce for £150.

The Midland Vinegar Company went on to profit from huge sales, and the sauce, named after the Houses of Parliament, became an icon of British food culture. It was the UK's best-selling brand of brown sauce last year, with 73.8 per cent of the retail market.

What happens now

The move would bring to an end the production of HP Sauce at Aston, where it has been made by the Midland Vinegar Company and its successors for more than a century.

If the move goes ahead, it will mean the loss of one of the best-known manufacturing names still based in the city, at a time when Birmingham is already coming to terms with the collapse of MG Rover at Longbridge last year.

Garton's name remained on HP bottles for many years after the sale, and today HP and Daddies are the two most popular national brands of brown sauce.