Ray Smyth:
One of many huge Bibbys factories in Liverpool. Bibbys employed thousands of people in the
production of animal feeds, soap powder, and cooking fats, which produced regular work for
many hauliers, as well as their own transport. Picture from Bootle History Forum.
A bit of info for Ray about Bibby’s. In 1933 J.Bibby bought the, then, closed down paper mill of Henry Cooke at Beetham near Milnthorpe with the intention of using a by product from their animal feed manufacture called “linter” to make paper. Bibby’s resurrected the mill and it was renamed Henry Cooke ( 1933 ) Ltd. Well not a lot happened until after WW2 and into the early 50’s but with new ( ex Bibby ) management the paper mill became a roaring success through the 60’s 70’s and onwards. But during these years of the impressive performance of the Mill and the gradual decline of the main Bibby Feeds, Seeds and foodstuff business well Henry Cooke who only accounted for 3 % of the Bibby Group T/O was for many years contributing 30% of total annual Group profits which was the reason all approaches to Bibby to sell the Paper Mill were always rejected as this would have caused considerable damage to the Group. This situation that existed at The Bibby Group was related to me many years ago by the late A G ( Geoffrey ) Thompson who had been the MD at the Mill for a number of years in the 70’s before he moved on to become Bibby’s Deputy Chairman and took over the Bibby Industrial Division and built that part up as the Liverpool side more or less withered away. Bibbys were eventually taken over in a friendly acquisition by Barlow Rand PTY from South Africa who via their subsidiary “Tiger Oates” had become large shareholders in J. Bibby & Son PLC. Sorry if it has got a bit boring but Bibby’s were a very interesting firm and Henry Cooke’s at Beetham were an absolute “gem” of a customer to work with straight as dye and in over 25 years starting work for them with a single 4 wheeler I eventually in the early 70’s took over all the Mill’s transport requirements both outward and inward and there was never a disagreement of any kind. I doubt firms of the calibre of Bibbys/ Cookes are probably non existent to-day of very few and far between ! Cheers Bewick.