Our Story

Eleven years in an attic.
Nearly two centuries on the shelf.

Before Borwick's, bread needed yeast and cakes needed luck. This is how a wedding gift — a formula on paper — became the world's first baking powder, and one of Britain's longest-lived brands.

1831
A formula and an attic
George Borwick marries Jane Hudson, and her father passes the couple a formula for a raising agent. In an attic workshop, George and Jane spend the next eleven years perfecting it — a powder to make bread, cakes and pastry rise without yeast.
1842
The world's first baking powder goes on sale
Borwick's Baking Powder is sold commercially for the first time — the first baking powder brand in the world. Every tin since has carried the same promise: Borwick's quality since 1842.
1848
Lighter, cheaper, more wholesome
Early press advertisements promise 'celebrated unfermented bread instead of yeast' and puddings and pastry made 'light and wholesome, with half the usual quantity of butter and eggs' — sold by chemists and grocers in packets from a penny.
1864
The London factory
Demand outgrows the family operation and a factory opens in London. Retail follows — first from a market stall in Walthamstow in 1885, later a dedicated High Street shop.
1896
600,000 packets a week
Borwick's becomes the best-selling baking powder in the world, moving six hundred thousand packets every week. Six gold medals earned at international exhibitions appear proudly on the packet.
1900s
The baking powder of the British Empire
The lion with its paw on a drum of Borwick's, the bulldog draped in the Union Jack, Britannia on the tin, hot air balloons lifting whole families skyward — 'as light as air'. Borwick's advertising becomes some of the most recognisable of the era.
1930s
250 recipes for good cooks
Celebrated cookery writer Elizabeth Craig pens '250 Recipes for use with Borwick's Baking Powder', and 'Good cooks use Borwick's' becomes the line on every label. It is still there today.
1939–45
Saves eggs, saves fat
Through the war years and rationing, Borwick's keeps Britain baking — 'cakes, puddings and pies cheaper, lighter and more digestible' when eggs and fat are scarce. By 1947 the tins declare it simply: The Best in the World.
1950s
Hove, Sussex
George Borwick & Sons Ltd operates from the Aldrington Works on Portland Road, Hove — the four-ounce tin on kitchen shelves across the country nearly identical to the one sold a century before.
2015
A new chapter with Hassani Group
Hassani Group acquires Borwick's, alongside Green's, bringing the world's first baking powder into its family of heritage food brands and carrying the name into new markets.
Today
The same label, the same promise
Pick up a tub of Borwick's today and you hold essentially the same design sold a hundred years ago — cream paper, black ink, George Borwick's signature, and a powder that still makes baking as light as air.