SERVICE TO COMPANY

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31339, 8 April 1967, Page 14

SERVICE TO COMPANY

46 Years At

Dairy Factory

Mr A. Peddie, who began work 46 years ago wrapping pounds of butter by hand, retired yesterday after being associated with the processing of about 48 million gallons of cream into butter. He was bidden farewell yesterday by the staff of the Tai Tapu Dairy Company’s factory in Moorhouse avenue. For more than 25 years dairy farmers in Canterbury supplying the factory relied on Mr Peddie's accuracy in recording the quantities of cream they sent. He became so adept at his work that he could tell by the shape of the dents in the cream cans from which of the 1000 suppliers they came.

Mr Peddie started at the factory in 1921 at the age of 16 and was given the dull but necessary job of wrapping lib lots of butter by hand. He reached a speed of about 6-81 b a minute.

When machines took over butter wrapping, Mr Peddie went to washing cream cans by hand. When this job also became a machine task, he was taught cream grading and received a Government ticket in 1931.

He was finally put in charge of recording Ml supplies of cream delivered to the factory which now processes about 5500 tons of butter a year, in 12 million lib packets. Mr Peddie said yesterday that the present price of butter was lower than it had been in the late 1920 s when it rose to 2s Hid per lb.