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Be-Ro



 
 
Thomas Bell, the son of William Bell, founded a grocery and tea company in Newcastle upon Tyne. Thomas had experimented with rising agents on flour in baking and from that produced the world's first self-raising flour. He founded the Bells Royal works which sold the Bell's Royal Flour. Following the death of Edward VII, it became illegal to use the Royal name. Thomas Bell decided to merge Bell and Royal into one name which is where Be-Ro came from.






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Thomas Bell, the son of William Bell, founded a grocery and tea company in Newcastle upon Tyne. Thomas had experimented with rising agents on flour in baking and from that produced the world's first self-raising flour. He founded the Bells Royal works which sold the Bell's Royal Flour. Following the death of Edward VII, it became illegal to use the Royal name. Thomas Bell decided to merge Bell and Royal into one name which is where Be-Ro came from. Thomas Bell started in his own right in small premises in the yard of the Black Boy Hotel adjoining the Groat Market in the centre of Newcastle in about 1875. As well as manufacturing baking powder and self-raising flour he produced a health salt which he discontinued. He also packed and marketed dried fruit, cereals, tea and coffee using such names as T.B. Royalty (later Royty), Black Diamond, and Belsun. He adapted Bell's Royal to BE-RO and registered it under the trade marks act of 1905.

Thomas Bell and Son Limited were incorporated on 10 November. They then moved into larger premises in Low Friar street. In 1911 the company purchased larger premises in Bath Lane. Thomas Bell died in 1925 and was succeeded by his descendents, which continued to expand the company to cover Carlisle and the whole of Co. Durham as well as Teesside
Teesside

Teesside is the name given to the conurbation in the North East England of England made up of the towns of Middlesbrough, Stockton-on-Tees, Hartlepool, Redcar, Billingham and surrounding settlements....
. Depots were later built at Leeds
Leeds

Leeds is located on the River Aire in West Yorkshire, England. It is the urban core and administrative centre of the wider metropolitan borough of the City of Leeds....
, Edinburgh
Edinburgh

Edinburgh ; is the Capital city of Scotland, a position it has held since 1437. It is the seventh largest city in the United Kingdom and the second largest Scottish City status in the United Kingdom after Glasgow....
, Sheffield
Sheffield

Sheffield is a city status in the United Kingdom and metropolitan borough in South Yorkshire, England. It is so named because of its origins in a field on the River Sheaf that runs through the city....
 and Birmingham
Birmingham

Birmingham is a city status in the United Kingdom and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. Birmingham is the most populous of England's English Core Cities Group, and is the List of United Kingdom cities by population British city after London, with a population of 1,010,200 ....
 and in 1931 they had decided upon Nottingham as a base to expand into the Midlands. Several dozen more depots were either built, bought or rented throughout England and Scotland.

The company continued its expansion by acquiring McDougall's eventually they were taken over by Rank and became Rank Hovis McDougal, RHM . In 1923 they sold the first of over 40 million copies of the BE-RO recipe book. The recipe book is the best selling recipe book in the world with over 120K books sold per year.

RHM
RHM

RHM plc, formerly Rank Hovis McDougall, was a United Kingdom food business. The company owned numerous brands, particularly for flour, where its core business started, and for consumer food products....
 was taken over by Premier Foods
Premier Foods

Premier Foods plc is a United Kingdom-based food manufacturer headquartered in St Albans. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a former constituent of the FTSE 250 Index....
 in March 2007, making Be-Ro a Premier Foods brand.

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