FROZEN MEAT JUBILEE

Hawera Star, Volume LII, 27 February 1933, Page 8

FROZEN MEAT JUBILEE

FIRST WELLINGTON SHIPMENT 50 YEARS AGO LAST SATURDAY Fifty years ago last Saturday the Shaw. ’ Snvill and Albion Co.’s ship Ladv .Toeelvn, 213 S tons register, sailed from Wellington for London with the first shipment of frozen meat from the North Island. It was actually the fifth shipment from New Zealand, but it. was none the less a very notable event, in the history of the Port of Wellington, reports the “'Dominion.’ •Just."over twelve months earlier —on February 15, 1882—the same company’s ship Dunedin, 1250 tons, had sailed from Port Chalmers with the first cargo of frozen meat from New Zealand. Her successful pioneer shipment was quickly followed in ISS2 by' others, including two in steamships, from the South Island, the four cargoes that year totalling 22,897 carcases. Last year more than 100 shipments of frozert meat, including over 11,350,000 carcases of lamb and mutton, were sent from New Zealand to Britain. The shipments of 1882-1883 laid the foundations of the Dominion’s great frozen meat and dairy* produce trade. The annual value of the frozen meat exports passed the £1 million mark at the end of nine years from tlie inception of the trade, that figure being doubled ten y'cars later. Last, y'ear, in spite of the great depression, New Zealand’s exports of lamb and mutton were valued at £7,500,000, and of butter and cheese at £15,590,000^