Poupart 1895, formerly known as Poupart Imports, has been celebrating its 130th anniversary, and looking back at roots firmly planted in this Market.

Now part of the AgroBerries Group, Poupart started life as TJ Poupart, a marketing company for the Poupart family who were market gardeners in the Thames Valley.

Records show the business trading on Covent Garden Market as far back as the 1850s but TJP (as it was commonly known) wasn’t officially established until 1895. It is thought that the business can actually be traced back even further, to the mid-eighteenth century when a French Huguenot Jean Poupart arrived in England and took up market gardening. What is documented is that Jean’s son Jacques was a market gardener, with a piece of land that later became the home to Chelsea Football Club, Stamford Bridge. Jacque’s son Samuel, in turn, took on the family business and had a market garden in Battersea – he was the great uncle of TJP Founder John Poupart.

The family farmhouse was a mile or so from Clapham Junction and until the 1960s, a signal box known as Poupart Junction existed not so far from the Nine Elms home of today’s New Covent Garden.

Back to 1895, and John built the business on two timeless principles: close ties with growers and an eye for the freshest fruit. And by the 1900s, TJP was among the first businesses to import South African oranges to Britain.

Two decades later, the importer had a pitch on Covent Garden’s ‘Central Avenue’, as well as branches at every major UK port.

By the mid 20th century TJP, as it was best known, was the most important wholesale company in the UK, operating in all the main markets and also packing salads in Hertfordshire. In 1970 it won its first supermarket contract and by 1987 was supplying all the major multiples. By 2000 the Poupart Group of companies had switched to concentrating on supplying supermarkets and importing produce.

Today, it is one of the UK’s oldest and most established fresh produce importers, across the full range of fruit and vegetables, specialising in supply to the non-retail sector.

Congratulations to one of the most influential firms in this market through the 20^th century on reaching its 130^th anniversary.

A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since Poupart celebrated 100 years in business, three decades years ago