Sunday, April 3, 2011

Symbol Biscuits Limited

In 1938, Lyons & Co., a British company that controlled the largest food empire in Britain at this time, purchased the Bee Bee Biscuit Company, which manufactured biscuits from its factory in Blackpool. Bee Bee Biscuits had originated in 1922 as the Blackpool Biscuit Company. Six years later, Lyons changed Bee Bee Biscuit's name to Symbol Biscuits and began selling biscuits under the Symbol and Lyons brand names.

Symbol manufactured approximately 40 different types of sweet, dry, and savory biscuits packed and sold under the Symbol and Lyons brands, its logo being an elephant's head. The introduction of Maryland Cookies in 1956 brought a significant increase in revenues.



In 1990 Lyons changed Symbol Biscuit's name to Lyons Biscuits Limited. The company continued to trade profitably until December 1994, when the business was sold to a subsidiary of Hillsdown Holidays Plc. for around £20 million. At the time, 780 people worked at the Blackpool factory. Since then, the company has been acquired by a U.S. Investment house and is currently part of Burton's Foods Limited, the second largest biscuit company in the UK.

By Mark Matlach
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1 comment:

  1. UnknownMay 15, 2021 at 8:22 AM

    My aunties lived in blackpool and we - me and my 3 very poor siblings lived in Oxford. Every now and then, out of the blue, they sent us a shop display style box of Symbol chocolate bars. They were virtually identical to a penguin chocolate bar. We were soooo excited and grateful. Our mum used to hide them in our cellar to stop us eating the lot in one day. She would give us one each per day to take to school, not that they ever made it past the front gate. Excellent

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