In 1887 the origins of Murphy & Son was established by Albert John Murphy in Leeds. In 1919, Mr. Murphy moved the company to Nottingham and its new home at the Hutchinson's, Prince of Wales Brewery site, which is still our base and is now a listed building.

While developing his product range, Mr. Murphy quickly realised the importance of formulating individual water treatments which can be used to enhance the immediate water supply to suit a beer's specific qualities. Very soon, preservatives, finings agents, cleaning products, enzymes and yeast foods were all added to the product range. Mr. Murphy's products were always supported by a strong team of technical experts to advise and optimise their use.

During the 1980's, Murphy's took the lead role in supporting the growth in new breweries, particularly micro breweries. These have grown strongly ever since, and Murphy and Son have changed and evolved to meet their growing needs. Now, through strategic alliances we can supply hops and malt, specialist yeasts and laboratory sundries to all kinds of breweries.

In 1998, we bought the brewing portfolio of Amyleau adding a range of enzymes, head retention agents and silicon anti-foams to our ever-increasing product range. In 2002, our purchase of Savilles enabled us to become a major manufacturer of isinglass finings.

In 2004, we diversified into manual handling products by buying Samuel Handley, a much respected and well established company which specialised in supplying safety equipment to the brewing industry. The product range has since been widened and now meets the needs of manual handling applications in food and drink distribution, home delivery services and furniture removals.

In the same year, we bought a controlling interest in Sutton & Phillips having previously manufactured and distributed their products which included the renowned cleaning materials Antiformin and Antiformin S our pipe cleaning detergent. In 2008, our acquisition of NBS Brewery Services further consolidated our position as a major player in the beverage industry manual handling supply chain.

As new challenges emerge in our industry, we are committed to carry on making a major contribution. We have developed two new products Murgrain and Murycide, to help in the safe disposal of brewing and distilling by-products. Together with the Zetol Corporation we have developed a range of Zetolite products to help reduce off flavours in beer and wine and enhance flavour characteristics.

We are proud to say that we continue to enjoy strong relationships with all of our customers large and small. For the future, we intend to move forward with a strong sense of history, and form close, mutually beneficial relationships within the industry. Murphy & Son gained accreditation to BS EN 5750 part 2 in 1993 and we have retained this accreditation as the British Standard changed to BS EN ISO 9002, as well as the present standard of BS EN ISO 9001:2008.