EARLY FREEZING INDUSTRY.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20647, 9 September 1932, Page 10

EARLY FREEZING INDUSTRY.

NOTABLE CHANGES.

THE FIRST WORKS IN CANTERBURY. MR F. T. PERKINS LOOKS BACK FIFTY YEARS. When, fifty years ago, the foundations of the New Zealand frozen meat industry, which has since brought so much wealth to the country, were laid, Mr F. T. Perkins, of Christchurch, played a large part in tho installation of the first freezing plants in Canterbury and in the North Island. In an interview with • The Peess yesterday Mr Perkins related some aspects of the early history of the industry, particularly as it concerned the first works in Canterbury.

The success of the first trial shipments of New Zealand frozen meat from the Burnside works at Dunedin, in February and June, 1882, induced the Christchurch people interested—the Canterbury Frozen Meat Company—to get Mr F. Coxon, who had come to Now Zealand as engineer to the first New Zealand Kofrigerating Company, to get the neccßsary machinery" for the Belfast works sent out immediately, said Mr Perkins. In the erection of the buildings and the setting up of machinery he had acted as draughtsman and clerk of works for Mr Coxon from August, 1882. The System Used. The low temperatures needed for the purposes of the freezing works were achieved by what was known as the Haslam dry air refrigerator. This did not use a chemical system such as those now employed, but simply a mechanical compression of the air, the later rapid expansion of which produced low temperatures. Though the chemical processes had superseded this one for all ordinary purposes, Mr Perkins had been informed that in Queensland even now, when specially low temperatures were wanted for hardening off carcases before shipment, the old Haslam plant was still used. When the company was founded it was as the Canterbury Frozen Meat and Dairy Produce Company, for it was thought that the trade would build up as much on the one side as the other. Mr Perkins was astonished at the extent to which the industry had grown. In the first years at the Smithfield works—the 1894-95 season—the output was 80,000 sheep and lambs, but before the ond of the century the works wero putting through 600,000 carcases a year. Handling the Sheep. The gamble in tho freezing industry started ten years after the Belfast works were founded. The Canterbury Frozen Meat Company had set out to "kill, freeze, and ship on owner's account," and so had not been buying sheep. For the first few years it was doing very well, but then one group of the shareholders wanted to change this to buying through agents, and, failing to achieve what they wanted, started the Christchurch Meat Company in 1893. "The sheep came in in big lots in those days, because there were far fewer small farmers, most of the country being taken up in big runs," said Mr Perkins. "It was common for a runholder to send 4000 fat wethers in one lino, and they would be so close in weight that not much difference could bo seen as they passed over the scale. I remember Mr John Grigg's first 2000 lambs coming in from Longbeach, and tho way we set to wont getting them out of the trucks.

Canned Meat Before 1880. "Even before the freezing works New Zealand did a fair business in tinned meat. The Washdyke boiling down works, which were situated on the hill this side of Smithfield, wero packing 61b tins of New Zoaland mutton for years before 1882. I can remember having come across this New Zealand boiled mutton in England in the '7O 's. It was jolly good stuff, too. "Later developments in meat packing came chiefly through the New Zealand Frozen Meat and Storage Co., whose works on the railway wharf in Auckland are now tho premises of the Now Zealand FarmcrsVFreezing Co. The chairman and managing director of tho company went to Chicago and imported the machinery to do the work and the men to run it. The works at Waitara (now Borthwick'6) were built as an auxiliary to tho Auckland canning works." Beginnings of Fertiliser Industry. Mr Perkins recalled also the early days of tho fertiliser industry as it grow up in connexion with the freezing works. At first, tho "ashmagandi"—the remnant left after boiling down the waste to extract the tallow—had merely been raked over hot plates in order to dry it out before it was put through the "devil grinder.'' But there was some trouble with this fertiliser, though it was good, because it tended to choke the drills, and a process had to be invented to get tho scraps of wool out of it. The first to sec the full bußineßs possibilities offered by fertilisers was a man named Moorhouse. Ho made a contract with the Canterbury Frozen Meat Company in 1884 to take all the blood frpin the works, and for him Mr Perkins designed a blood boiler which was made by Scott's foundry.

Getting Rid of Waste. The utilisation of all other Waste from the freezing works came later,. At one time at Islington—that would be in 1893 or 1894—a1l the offal used to be carted out into special paddocks nearby, whore hundreds of pigs used to feed on it. This practice was stopped by the au : thoritics. Another idea had been to keep poultry to cat some of tho waste, but tho hens died. After starting with the Canterbury Frozen Meat Company at Belfast in 1882, Mr Perkins acted in succession as clerk of works for the building and installation of the plant for tho Wellington Meat Export Coy., for the N.Z, Frozen Meat and Storage "Coy., at Auckland and Waitara, and then, in 1887 or 1888, went-to Australia, where he acted in the same capacity at the Aberdeen works, the Bpurko boiling down works, and at Eagle Farm and Townsville, in Queensland, In 1893 he came back to New Zealand to assist tho Christchurch Meat Company in the establishment of its first plant at' Islington, later going on to the company's works at Smithfield and Picton. He remained with this company ten years, being generally responsible for the plant, and after that continued to do the same work in other centres.