Later Years

The company continued to be extremely successful and the milk bottling and ice-cream production departments expanded rapidly and gained a high reputation in the Midlands area. There were many depots throughout the country including the following in the West Midlands:

Bearwood
Birmingham – Corporation Street
Birmingham – Manchester Street
Blackheath
Brierley Hill
Coventry
Erdington
Kingstanding
Quinton
Solihull
Walsall
West Bromwich
Wolverhampton – Fern Road (egg packing station)
Wolverhampton – Heath Town
Wolverhampton – Penn Road


One of the successful battery-powered delivery vehicles.


A later type of delivery vehicle.

By the 1960s the Wolverhampton dairy and the Birmingham dairy filled 750,000 bottles of milk daily and the company employed 3,000 people. In 1963 a new bottling plant was built at Perry Point in Birmingham and the business was taken over by Unigate. In 1973 Lyons Maid bought an 85% controlling share.


A Unigate delivery vehicle.

Penn Road Dairy closed in 1984 and was demolished in 1988 to make way for the McDonalds drive-in restaurant.


The dairy awaiting its fate, after closure in 1984.


The closed dairy, seen from Penn Road in the mid 1980s.


Return to
Personalities
Return to the
beginning
Proceed to Company Magazine