Oxo (food)

Oxo (stylized OXO) is a brand of food products, including stock cubes, herbs and spices, dried gravy, and yeast extract. The original product was the beef stock cube, and the company now also markets chicken and other flavour cubes, including versions with Chinese and Indian spices. The cubes are broken up and used as flavouring in meals or gravy or dissolved into boiling water to produce a bouillon. In the United Kingdom, the OXO brand belongs to Premier Foods. In South Africa, the Oxo brand is owned and manufactured by Mars, Incorporated and in Canada is owned and manufactured by Knorr. Liebig's Extract of Meat Company Around 1840, Justus von Liebig developed a concentrated meat extract. Liebig's Extract of Meat Company (Lemco; established in the United Kingdom) promoted it, starting in 1866. The original product was a viscous liquid, containing only meat extract and 4% salt. In 1899, the company introduced the trademark Oxo; the origin of the name is unknown, but presumably comes from the word "ox." Since the cost of liquid Oxo remained beyond the reach of many families, the company launched a research project to develop a solid version that could be sold in cubes for a penny. After much research, Oxo produced their first cubes in 1910 and further increased Oxo's popularity. During World War I, 100 million Oxo cubes were provided to the British armed forces, all of them individually hand-wrapped. The Vestey Group acquired Lemco in 1924, and the factory was renamed El Anglo. Vestey merged with Brooke Bond in 1968, which was in turn acquired by Unilever in 1984. Unilever sold the Oxo brand to the Campbell Soup Company in 2001, and Premier Foods bought Campbell's UK operation in 2006. This sale included sites at both Worksop and Kings Lynn. The Worksop plant currently produces Oxo cubes. In South Africa, Oxo is now a brand of Mars, Incorporated. The only product marketed under the Oxo brand in South Africa was a yeast-extract-based spread. The product also contained a small portion of beef extract, giving it a slightly "beefier" taste than other yeast extracts.