{"story":["When world depression struck in the 1880s, New Zealand's sheep farmers had only two exportable products, wool and tallow. The 1966 Encyclopaedia of New Zealand records that sheep were kept during the flush of grass and then boiled down for tallow, and that shorn sheep were sold by the score because they had scarcely any value per head. Experimental shipments of frozen meat from Argentina in 1877 and from Australia in 1879 had shown another way. William Soltau Davidson, the British-based general manager of the New Zealand and Australian Land Company, had taken a keen interest in such experiments from 1876. They had proved the concept, if not yet the economic viability, of shipping frozen meat around the globe. His company's landholdings in New Zealand and Australia exceeded 1 million hectares, and Davidson realised that before many of its less suitable properties could be profitably farmed by smallholders, outlets for their produce would need to be found.","Davidson fitted out a passenger sailing ship, the Albion Line's Dunedin, with insulated chambers and a coal-powered Bell-Coleman freezing plant. Thomas Brydone, the company's New Zealand superintendent, was sent to Britain to study refrigeration and then ran the experiment at the New Zealand end. He supervised the selection of stock, built slaughtering facilities at Totara Estate near Ōamaru, and organised the carriage of the carcasses by rail to Port Chalmers, where the mutton and lamb were frozen on board. Brydone also supervised the loading in February 1882. Davidson organised the shipping, the insurance and the distribution in London.","The Dunedin sailed from Port Chalmers on 15 February 1882, with Davidson and Brydone there to see her off. NZHistory puts the cargo at about 5000 carcasses; the 1966 Encyclopaedia gives some 130 tons of meat (about 132 tonnes), or about 4,000 carcasses. When the ship was becalmed in the tropics, the crew noticed that the cold air in the hold was not circulating properly. Captain John Whitson crawled inside and sawed extra air holes, almost freezing to death before crew members pulled him out with a rope and revived him. The Dunedin reached London on 24 May after a passage of 98 days. Davidson was already there, waiting to examine the cargo for himself. Only one carcass had to be condemned, and within a fortnight the shipment had sold for more than twice the price it would have fetched in New Zealand.","A single successful shipment did not make an industry, and Davidson set about building a marketing and insurance structure in Britain. The first freezing works was built at Burnside, Dunedin, in 1882. In 1883 the Gear Meat Preserving and Freezing Company began freezing in Wellington, the Canterbury Frozen Meat Company opened a works at Belfast and William Nelson started freezing at Tōmoana in Hawke's Bay. Frozen meat exports tripled from 4,300 tons in 1883 to more than 12,000 tons in 1884, and by 1892 there were 21 freezing works, 12 in the North Island and nine in the South. Canterbury dominated the trade until the First World War, and by 1895 newspapers noted that 'Canterbury' had become the standard term for the best class of meat exported from New Zealand. The Dunedin made another nine successful voyages before disappearing in the Southern Ocean in 1890.","Te Ara notes that the 1882 voyage is seen as a watershed in New Zealand's economic development, but adds that the country did not begin to feel any real economic benefit from the frozen meat trade until the mid-1890s, and that cross-breeding and the sowing of introduced grasses were already well advanced in the South Island before 1882. Refrigeration also opened a large market for butter and cheese, and the real expansion of dairying came on the better soils of Taranaki, Manawatū and Waikato. NZHistory credits the new technology with making the owner-operated family farm the standard economic unit in rural New Zealand for the next century. For that century most of New Zealand's meat was shipped to Britain as frozen carcasses. When Britain entered the European Economic Community in 1973, New Zealand secured access to the British market for its butter and cheese, but earlier trade agreements covering its other products became void. A memorial at Totara commemorates Brydone's work."],"sources":[{"title":"First frozen meat shipment leaves New Zealand","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/first-shipment-of-frozen-meat-leaves-nz","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"Refrigeration (1966 Encyclopaedia of New Zealand)","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/1966/shipping-overseas-and-coastal-lines/page-6","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Factors in Pre-1914 Prosperity (1966 Encyclopaedia of New Zealand)","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/1966/history-economic/page-4","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Davidson, William Soltau","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2d4/davidson-william-soltau","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Brydone, Thomas","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2b45/brydone-thomas","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Farming in the economy – Refrigeration and sheep farming","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/farming-in-the-economy/page-3","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Farming in the economy – Refrigeration and the growth of the dairy industry","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/farming-in-the-economy/page-4","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Farming in the economy – The golden years, 1950s to 1980s","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/farming-in-the-economy/page-7","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Agricultural processing industries – Freezing works, 1880s to the 1970s","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/agricultural-processing-industries/page-7","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"}]}