Maynards

Maynards was a confectionery manufacturer in the United Kingdom and Canada. It was best known for manufacturing wine gums, Sour Patch Kids and Sour Cherry Blasters. Following acquisition by Cadbury in the 1990s, it is now a brand of Mondelez International.

A pack of Maynards Wine Gums

History

Charles Riley Maynard and his brother Tom started manufacturing sweets in 1880 in their kitchen in Stamford Hill, London. Next door, Charles's wife, Sarah Ann, ran a sweet shop selling their products. In 1896 the brothers formed the Maynards sweet company.

Ten years later, in 1906, the expanding concern moved a mile or so to a new factory in Vale Road, Harringay. The new factory site, below an embankment of The New River, permitted clean Hertfordshire spring water to be used in production, whilst the proximity of the Lee Navigation and numerous railways facilitated the easy, cheap shipping of the required coal, sugar, and gelatin. London itself provided a ready market of some ten million people, and the world’s largest commercial port was within five miles.

Around the turn of the century, Charles Gordon, heir to the confectionery firm, suggested to his father that they diversify into making “wine gums”, an idea that outraged Charles senior, a strictly teetotal Methodist. Nevertheless, Charles Riley gradually came round to the idea when his son persuaded him that the projected new sweets would not contain alcohol. Maynard’s Wine Gums were introduced in 1909.

The works grew consistently to become a four-figure employer in the Harringay area. As Maynards grew, it expanded its manufacturing operations to other locations. These included a toffee factory in Ouseburn, Newcastle.

The brothers' roots in sweet shop retailing were instrumental in the growth of retail operations to 140 shops. These were disposed of by sale in 1985.^[1]

In 1990, Maynards merged with the Tottenham liquorice mill Bassetts, and Trebor. In 1998, following the acquisition of the company by Cadbury, the London factory closed and Maynards Wine Gums and associated sweet manufacture was continued at a Sheffield premises that had come on-stream in 1991. By 2002 worldwide sales of Maynards Wine Gums were forty million pounds sterling per annum.

The Harringay premises is now a warehouse for The Oriental Carpet Company. The Ouseburn toffee factory is part of a multimillion-pound urban regeneration programme.