The Company became the sole marketing office for Swaziland Fruit Canners in 1984. In 1986, Peaty Millswith a staff of seven, moved to Bridge House and began to expand. Since that time, the Company complement has grown to seventeen and the product range runs to several hundred items from a wide range of international sources.

In the late 80s, a determined effort was made to become specialists in the emerging supermarket own label sector. Tesco was the first client - at the time they were ranked 14 in the UK. We now supply all the major UK supermarket chains and many further afield in the EU.

• In 1990, Peaty Mills and Co Ltd became Peaty Mills plc following the sad death of Derek Mills.
• In October 1999, the founder Arthur Peaty stood down and his son Nick Peaty was elected to take over this role.
• In 2000, Colin Young FCA was appointed Financial Director. In 2003, Mike Bailey, formerly of Bonduelle became Sales Director.

• In 2004 Bruce Henderson, C.E.O of the Rhodes Food Group of Cape Town joined the Board, replacing Richard Ferreira who moved to Perth, Australia to work on other projects.

• In 2006, we began to give full service contracts to supermarkets outside of the UK, in the wider EU. Peaty Mills now supplies all the top 7 supermarket groups in the UK.

• In 2007, Peaty Mills became the sole agent for Seneca foods, the world’s largest producer of can vegetables, who specialise in high quality sweet corn products.

• In 2008, wanting to further diversify, Peaty Mills were appointed sole UK agents for Reitzel Misrachi. Reitzel are one of the leading pickle vegetable producers with factories based throughout Europe and are now one of the top gherkin manufacturers in India.

• In 2009, Gordon Milligan was invited to join the board of directors, having successfully developed our industrial juice business.

• In 2010, Bruce Henderson resigned from the Board to devote more of his time to the rapidly expanding Rhodes Food group. Later that year Rhodes purchased the Sapco plant in Cape Town from Del Monte. Furtherinvestments have been made in the factory and Rhodes Foods Fruit Products are now able to offer products that are unrivalled in the market place.

After celebrating over 30 years in the business, Peaty Mills has continued to grow and in 2011 company turnover will exceed £30m.