Introduction and Brief Overview

All the very early information, up to 1946, I acquired from the documents and various papers left by my grandfather, who started the company, and his son Albert Baumann (my uncle), who produced a set of memoirs in which he referred to many of the earlier competitors.  To this I added a certain amount of my own research.  Some information was taken from the book “Huntley and Palmer’s of Reading:  1822 – 1972” written by T A B Corley and from the booklet “John Pyott:  1862 – 1947” by J S Bennie.

My connection with the biscuit industry covers 37 years and this gives me the knowledge of what happened in the past.

1940	Served one year’s apprenticeship in my grandfather’s bread, cake and biscuit factory in Brickhill Road, on the factory floor.
1946	Returned to Bakers Ltd as a clerk having qualified as a Chartered Accountant.
1949	Appointed a Director of Bakers Ltd and Selected Products Ltd.
1958	Appointed Managing Director of Bakers Ltd.
1971	Appointed Chairman of the Bakers Group.
1975	Became the Chief Executive Director of Selected Products Ltd as well.
1978	Chairman of the National Association of Biscuit Manufacturers of South Africa (to 1984).
1983	November.  Retired as Chief Executive Director of the biscuit group but remained on the Board for some years.

During the period of my involvement in the biscuit industry, I naturally came into contact with all the people involved so all the information recorded for this period is from personal knowledge.

In the early days Bakers Ltd held about 36% market share in biscuits and its subsidiary company Baumanns in Cape Town held about 18% of the South African market share.  At the time that I retired from business after we had sold our company to Anglovaal Ltd, the Bakers Group held 90% of the biscuit market share.  The remaining 10% consisted of ‘own name’ brands for the supermarkets and one or two small companies.

During this period Bakers Ltd acquired all the other biscuit companies.  It is interesting that we did not approach the other companies to buy them out but they approached us, and I sometimes wonder why this should be.   Why did they not sell  to somebody else who might be interested in baking biscuits?   I think a reason could be that we had built up a good name in the industry and with our competitors.  Our competitors also knew that we established good staff relations with people employed by us and probably felt that their staff would be well looked after.  Knowing our abilities in the biscuit market, they perhaps believed they could get a better price from us.  Our failure to actively pursue the purchase of other companies probably stems back to an earlier outlook when my uncle, Albert Baumann, was Managing Director and who grew the company vigorously.   He maintained that it was good for us always to have an active competitor because this kept us on our toes.

During most of my time in the industry the major players in order of size were

            Bakers Ltd trading as Bakers
            Selected Products Ltd trading as Baumanns Biscuits
            Pyotts Biscuits
            Premier Biscuit Company trading as Three Rings Biscuits
            Hays Biscuits (later named Westons)

All biscuit manufacturers started off as bread bakers who also made a few hand-made biscuits.

Biscuit manufacturing as an industry really started from the day the first machine was constructed to make biscuits, displacing small scale production by hand.  Several biscuit companies were started and some failed.  There were take-overs and name changes and even factory moves to other areas.  The date list which follows gives a shortened picture of these events from 1883 when the first biscuit machine was installed in South Africa until 1984 when I retired from business.

Relevant dates relating to the various biscuit producers in South Africa