The story
The company was founded in Rotherham in 1853 as Kenyon & Son as a producer of confectionery, jam and pickles. By 1891 the company had become Kenyon & Son and Craven Limited. The company switched to producing roasted and salted hazelnuts in 1948, expanding to peanuts later. These were originally produced for sale in cinemas. In 1952 the company introduced Hercules Nuts and in 1953 the No.1 KP Nuts peanut brand.
The company became part of United Biscuits (UB) in 1968. The KP Snacks subsidiary produces a range of packet snack brands including Hula Hoops, Skips, McCoy's, Frisps, Brannigan's, Royster's, Space Raiders, Nik Naks, Wheat Crunchies, Discos, and Phileas Fogg. The snacks part is based on Teesside and in Rotherham, near the UB distribution warehouse.
The Ashby-de-la-Zouch site won a Best Factory Award in 2004.
UB sold the company to the German company Intersnack in December 2012 for £500 million. The company moved its headquarters to Slough in 2015.
In February 2022, it was reported that the KP Snacks supply chain was affected by a ransomware attack.
In July 2023, workers threatened to strike because of low wages despite KP Snacks registering profits of £54 million. Unite union reported that the average pay at KP Snacks had fallen by 14% in real terms since 2018.
From Wikipedia’s article on KP Snacks, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3