Typhoo Tea filed a court notice to appoint administrators following several years of declining sales, mounting debts and even a break-in at its Wirral factory last year.
Typhoo’s latest company filings showed that it made a £38 million loss last year, while sales fell by a quarter to £25.3 million. It had 116 employees as of late 2023.
In August 2023, Typhoo suffered a further blow when trespassers broke into the company’s former factory in Merseyside and occupied the site for several days.
Typhoo said at the time that they caused “extensive damage” and made the site “inaccessible”.
The company had been trying to sell the factory, in a deal which eventually went through in June 2024.
But Typhoo said the incident made up the bulk of £24 million of exceptional costs that year, and that it had “materially” affected its day-to-day running.
Founded in 1903, Typhoo has long been one of Britain’s best-known tea brands. The selected name, Typhoo, comes from the Mandarin Chinese word for “doctor”.
Typhoo began making tea bags in 1967. In 1968, Typhoo merged with Schweppes. The following year this company in turn merged with Cadbury to form Cadbury Schweppes.
But the company has faced a torrid time ever since 2018 when it reported a £20m loss. In 2020, the company’s accounts reported that an inability to refinance or extend its financing agreements “represents a material uncertainty which may cast significant doubt over the company’s ability to continue as a going concern”. And now the decline in recent years has pushed it to the brink of going out of business.
Since 2021, private equity firm Zetland Capital has been its majority shareholder.
It hired the former head of Burts crisps, Dave McNulty, as its new chief executive in October, while also launching a shake-up of its supply chain.
The overhaul was intended to stop sexual violence against women working on tea plantations in east Africa, and resulted in reducing the number of plantations in its supply chain in the region from 300 to just three.
Mr McNulty told the BBC on Friday that Typhoo had appointed administrators at EY, in a move which “affords the company some breathing space to explore solutions”.
Typhoo and EY declined to comment.