New Plymouth chemist and businessman Alfred Sykes started up the Sykes chemist shop in Devon Street in 1892. As that business prospered, he moved into 76 King Street, as a wholesale manufacturing chemist. Expanding into a different market, he soon took advantage of a burgeoning farming industry by making Sykes's cattle drench and a wide range of veterinary cures.
For more than a century, three generations of Sykes worked at Alfred's factory on King St, and there they produced a raft of things. Some of the most memorable were Sykes's Cordials, Cura Cough, Sykol Suntan Lotion, Fruit Essences, the ubiquitous Leswork household cleaning products and Sykes's cattle drench.
After many of their other products were hit by radical licensing changes the company increasingly concentrated on expanding their best selling cordials and supplying wood alcohol to chemists and hospitals. The name of the company changed to Sykes Cordials in 1968 and in 1976 the business was sold to Western Bottling Company Ltd who sold it to Oasis Industries in 1988. The cordials were produced for a while longer by a bottling company in Auckland, then on-sold to Sentry Hill Wines of Lepperton.