1927

Daintee Confectionery’s Blackpool Start

Daintee Chocolate Confectionery Company (Blackpool) Ltd was founded by three brothers, Stanley, Fred and Roy Kitt in 1927. Its first premises were in Crystal Road, Blackpool, moving to 20/22 Lune Grove shortly afterwards. The Kitt family had been making sugar confectionery in Plymouth, London and Bridgend since the 1850s and the boys father, William Edward, had taken on the position of manager of Paige’s Mints on Henry Street in 1924 when the family moved to Blackpool. At the age of 16, Stanley had been employed as the youngest first hand sugar-boiler at Waller & Hartley sweets which was at that time on Peter Street, but as the work was seasonal, he and his brothers decided to open their own business and compete with their former employer. The name “Daintee” was borrowed from a sweet shop they had seen in Bridgend and came from the word “Dainties” which was another word for sweets at that time. Although Daintee produced several varieties of sweets, the major part of the business was manufacturing lettered rock for the local and south coast tourist towns which continued until the early 1960s. The business prospered and by 1938 a large plot of land was purchased on a new light-industrial estate in Lower Marton where the company was to stay for the next 60 years. 

In the early days, all sweets were wrapped by hand and Daintee would deliver product to local houses where housewives would wrap them whilst listening to the radio with a good worker being able to wrap a hundredweight of sweets (112lbs) in an evening. Automatic wrapping machines, capable of a wrapping speed of 60 sweets per minute, were in their infancy and Daintee had placed an order for 10 machines in 1939. However, they were not delivered until after 1945 when the Second World War had ended. In 1947 Daintee produced it first sweets for export with the major markets being the Middle East, USA, Canada and Sweden, a business which was to continue for the next 50 years and account for 30% of sales. During the 1950s, Daintee employed 30 salesmen and sold 4lb jars of sweets to almost all of the sweet shops in the United Kingdom, delivering them in their own distinctive blue vans. In the late 1950s Pick ’N’ Mix sweets became hugely popular and Daintee became a major supplier to Woolworth’s, Littlewoods and British Home Stores. 

In the 1960s the manufacture of lettered rock was discontinued as well as sales to small retailers and Daintee concentrated on manufacturing sweets for the supermarkets Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Fine Fare under their own brand. This change in direction took competitors by surprise as they rightly thought that Daintee was in danger of losing its brand name. However,  over the next 20 years the majority of them had followed suit but by that time Daintee had become well established as the premier supplier of private label sweets in the UK. In 1987 Fred and Roy sold their shares in the manufacturing business and retired. Stanley remained as President and his son Stanley took over as Chairman. The company continued to expand and in 1993 won the First Leisure / Blackpool Evening Gazette award for Company of the Year. By the time Daintee was sold to Toms Group of Denmark in 1997 it was producing 8400 tons of sweets a year, had a turnover of £15 million and employed 200 people. 

The text above was written by Stanley C Kitt, Chairman & Managing Director of Daintee (1986 – 2001), specifically for Blackpool Timeline on 17 December 2024.

Valeo Confectionery Limited (formerly known as Tangerine Confectionery Limited and Toms Confectionery Limited) is a British confectionery company with its headquarters in Pontefract, West Yorkshire. Since 2006, it had grown through acquisitions into one of the largest independent confectionery companies in Europe before acquisition by Valeo Foods and the fourth largest sweet maker in the United Kingdom. The company has six factories: Blackburn, Blackpool, Cleckheaton, Liverpool, Pontefract and York.

The Daintee factory in Lune Grove Blackpool around 1935.

Here’s 46 year old Stanley with the Daintee Canadian agent George L Edmonson during a visit to the Woodwards British Trade Week, Vancouver BC, Canada on 5 July 1957, both looking very dapper! George and Stanley were good friends for many years.

A staff outing to Southport in 1949. In the centre is Roy Kitt, Stanley’s mother Kathleen Kitt and his father Stanley Kitt, and Fred Kitt.

Image by © Norman Butler FRPS

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Text source: written by Stanley Kitt for Blackpool Timeline

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