Hovis

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Hovis Ltd
Limited company
Industry Food
Founded Macclesfield, Cheshire, United Kingdom (1886)
Headquarters High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire
Key people
 Nish Kankiwala, Chairman[1]
Products Bread, flour
Owner The Gores Group (51%)
Premier Foods (49%)
Slogan "As good today as it's always been"
Website www.hovisbakery.co.uk

Hovis Ltd is a British company that produces flour and bread. The brand originated in Macclesfield, Cheshire, in 1886, and became part of Rank Hovis McDougall (RHM) in 1962 after a succession of mergers. RHM, with its brands including Hovis and Mother's Pride, was acquired by Premier Foods in 2007.

Hovis became a limited company in April 2014, after Premier Foods sold a 51% stake in the business to The Gores Group to form a joint venture between the two companies.[2]

Hovis specialises in high wheatgerm wholemeal flour, the bread being baked independently. It also produces the Nimble brand reduced-calorie bread.[3]

History

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File:Stoneygrave.jpg
Grave of Richard "Stoney" Smith in Highgate Cemetery. The inscription details his discovery of the Hovis process.
Hovis's Managing Director giving a pep talk to staff in 1935

The brand began in 1886;[4] the Hovis process was patented on 6 October 1887[5] by Richard "Stoney" Smith (1836–1900), and S. Fitton & Sons Ltd developed the brand, milling the flour and selling it along with Hovis branded baking tins to other bakers. The name was coined in 1890 by London student Herbert Grime in a national competition set by S. Fitton & Sons Ltd to find a trading name for their patent flour which was rich in wheat germ. Grime won £25 when he coined the word from the Latin phrase hominis vis – "the strength of man".[4] The company became the Hovis Bread Flour Company Limited in 1898.[4]

When the abundance of certain B vitamins in wheatgerm was reported in 1924, Hovis increased in popularity.[4]

Advertising

Hovis bread monument at Gold Hill

In 1915, when the London and South Western Railway inaugurated their first electric train services, they introduced alphabetical head-codes in lieu of the traditional discs used on steam locomotives so that the general public could more easily identify their train. A 1926 advertisement widely deployed on the railways showed five such trains carrying headcodes H ō V I S along with an explanation (H-Hampton Court, ō-Hounslow, V-Kingston (Thames Valley), I-Dorking North & Effingham and S-Shepperton). The fact that the "clockwise" Hounslow Loop head-code was a slightly height-reduced 'O' topped by a bar explains the unique rendering of the brand as HōVIS - a rendering that significantly outlasted the advertising campaign.

In 1973, Hovis became lodged in the public imagination through an evocative television advertisement, "Boy on Bike" (a.k.a. "Boy on the Bike" and "Bike Ride"),[4] written by Geoff Seymour from the Collett Dickenson Pearce advertising agency and directed by Ridley Scott, who six years later would come to the public's attention when Alien was released. The advert featured the slow movement of Antonín Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 rearranged for brass.[6] The advert has been voted Britain's favourite advertisement of all time [7] The ad was filmed on Gold Hill in Shaftesbury, Dorset.

This advertisement was repeated on British television for a 10-day run in May 2006 to commemorate the firm's 120th anniversary. The boy on the bike, Carl Barlow, then aged 13, became a firefighter in East Ham in 1979, and later acted in the films Alien and Gladiator.[8][9]

In 2008 Hovis departed from the "boy on a bike" format by commissioning Go On Lad a retrospective advertisement documenting the 122 years of British history since the brand's launch. Go On Lad was voted "Advert of the Decade" by the British public in December 2009.

Hovis map books

Hovis Ltd. published a series of map books which included advertisements for their products. In 1899 the company produced eight books of maps, covering England and Wales, designed for cyclists.[10] In 1920 the company published Where to Go and How to Get There: Hovis Road Map of England, Wales and Scotland, and several versions of this book were later printed.[11]

Hovis biscuit

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Main article: Hovis biscuit

Since 1980, Hovis have licensed Jacob's to produce a digestive biscuit, branded as Hovis.[4] Now a United Biscuits product, they are shaped like a miniature flat copy of the traditional Hovis loaf, and like the bread have the word "HOVIS" stamped on their top surface.

References

  1. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ GB 189905961  Smith, Richard A New or Improved Method or Process for Treating the Germ of Wheat for Food Purposes. 1900-02-17
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ "Back to where I was born and bread - Hovis boy recreates famous advert 40 YEARS later". Mirror, 4 December 2013
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ "Hovis road map of England, Wales and Scotland". Holdings of the Roger S. Baskes Collection (Newberry Library).

External links

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