The Frozen Foods Industry
In the 1870's a French inventor had perfected a way of refrigerating ships holds with cold dry air, the first commercial use of the system was for a shipment of frozen meat from America to London in 1874. Further batches of frozen meat were then imported from Argentina (1878) and Australia (1879). By the 1880's controlled refrigeration systems in ships holds enabled the transportation of exotic fruits such as bananas and also allowed chilled meat and butter to be brought all the way from Australia and New Zealand.
The GWR used what appear to be 'live fish' containers for shipping fish in ice in the 1930's, by which time standard container flat wagons were available to carry these. The GWR boxes operated from Milford Haven and possibly other ports. These containers are discussed and illustrated in the section on 'Unit Loads - Early container types'
These products and techniques introduced new traffic for the railways and also changed the existing practices. Mechanical cooling was not used on British railway stock, instead vans were insulated to carry chilled products or fitted with ice tanks to carry frozen goods. See also 'Goods Rolling Stock Design - Specialised Rolling Stock'
Ice was collected in winter and stored in underground store houses (some dating back to the 1600's), it was a useful way to store foods and Britain had even been importing ice from the Northern USA and Norway since the 1840's. Mechanical cooling made ice much more widely available but the underground ice houses remained in use up to about the time of the First World War.
Quick frozen foods appeared in the mid 1930s, however at that time few (if any) homes had a freezer and few shops had them either. Small scale quick-freezing was carried out in the 1930s by a number of processors using different freezing techniques. Fish merchanting companies such as Associated Fisheries Ltd and H Smethurst (Fish Curers) Ltd froze fish primarily for the catering trade, while some freezing of vegetables was undertaken by Smedley's Ltd. The manufacture of consumer-sized packs of frozen foods for national distribution through the retail trade was pioneered by Birds Eye after the Second World War. It was only after 1957 that the market developed, but it did so quickly with annual growth running at about 36 percent for the first few years.
The frozen food industry was, by the 1970s, the major purchaser of UK grown vegitables. About half the green peas, three quarters of the green beans, large quantities of brussels sprouts, and smaller quantities of carrots and onions. About 7 percent of the UK potato harvest went into frozen and chilled chip manufacture (which is about
388,000 tons for the 1973-74 season) The majority of vegetables for freezing are purchased on annual contracts between the growers and the processors.
In 1945 the Americans developed the first range of frozen 'TV dinners'.
Since the 1980s the deep frozen food industry has seen a decline as 'chilled' foods gained in popularity.
Modelling UK Frozen Food Factories and Distribution
Deep frozen foods benefit greatly from the economies of scale, production costs are high and a high turnover is required to make the process economic. Hence there were few, if any, small independent frozen food works prior to World War Two however since then there have been a number of factories set up, as well as the 'brand name' firms such as Findus and Birds Eye there are a lot of firms who sell their produce to be branded by the retailers.
The frozen foods factories, supplying the catering trade, appeared in the 1930s, however the majority have been built post war and all are of conventional appearance with no distinguishing features. Any large fairly modern concrete framed building will do, just add an appropriate sign and perhaps a refrigerated lorry or two in the yard.
Given all the mergers and aquisitions within the industry, and the consequent changes to logos and branding, the best bet is probably to invent your own firm for the layout, sketch below shows a made up example 'Wellpack Foods Ltd, Freshly Frozen - Quickly supplied'.
Fig ___Frozen food company lorry
The factories need to be close to the source of supply, as an example of the time constraints peas need to be processed within 90 minutes of picking, so these factories are located in the country or in ports handling fish. In the UK most deep frozen fish and vegetable factories are in the East close to the farms and ports that supply them. It was only in 1957 that British fish were deep frozen for the first time, this allowed the fish to be stored for up to nine months.
Inwards flow to the works would mainly be from local sources, the nearby farms or the fish dock at the local port.
A major problem for the frozen foods industry is distribution, they have to maintain a chain a deep freeze stores around the country from which to supply their customers. They were a novelty retail item until the later 1960s, when sales took off as people bought refrigerators with freezer compartments (in the later 1950s and early 1960s the UK market grew at over 30 percent per year)
Distribution requires the use of highly insulated and fairly rapid transport, in the post war era British Railways built a number of insulated containers for this traffic. A notable example is the AFP (A means the smaller size closed container design, F signifies insulated for frozen cargo, and P indicates it is designed to carry palletised loads). These were produced from about 1960 in both sheet metal and moulded plastic versions and were equipped with dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) bunkers to keep the cargo cold in transit. An early adopter was Birds Eye frozen foods who began operating them in their own livery in about 1961. BR also used these containers painted in their standard pale blue with black markings 'insulated' container livery and in the late 1960's some former Birds Eye boxes appeared in the (much easier to replicate) Macfisheries livery. I believe the AFP containers were not standard A size boxes, given that two of them were a snug fit on a twenty one foot long chassis I think they were actually about nine to ten feet long. They were lifted on and off the Conflat B wagons using standard RCH type roof mounted lifting rings. These containers are discussed and illustrated in the section on 'Unit Loads - Early container types'
Fig ___ AFP containers in Macfisheries livery
The slightly larger Conflat L wagons (based on redundant steel plate wagon underframes) were also used for the AFP containers.
Frozen Food Companies in the UK
The illustraions shown below are provisional, the logos are right but the detail on the Ross and Findus lorries is doubtful, there may well have been additional lettering.
Fig ___Frozen food company lorries
The first British frozen food company was Smedley's who started selling frozen foods to caterers in 1937.
Fig ___ Smedley's logo
In 1968 Smedley's Ltd was acquired by Imperial Group Ltd. (part of the diversification programme of Imperial Tobacco). In 1970 Imperial Group took over Ross group Ltd, Smedley's frozen food marketing and distribution was integrated with that of Ross Foods and the 'Smedley' brand name for products was phased out. By the late 1970s Smedley—HP Foods Ltd (Smedley) were freezing vegetables and some meat products for Ross Foods, the vegetables were processed at two factories and vegetables and meat products at one factory. In 1983 Hillsdown Ltd (now known as Premier Foods) acquired TKM Foods, including the Smedley’s canned and frozen fruit and vegetables and the factory at Wisbech, subsequently disposing of the frozen fruit and vegetable activities. The Smedley's cannery at Maldon was closed the same year.
Birds Eye deep frozen foods appeared in America in 1924, the name Birds Eye dates from 1931 but it was 1937 before they set up a factory in the UK, set up by Robert Ducas, chairman of a Kent engineering company, Winget Ltd, who had tried frozen foods in the US and was impressed by their British potential. In August 1938 Birds Eye Foods Ltd was incorporated, owned by General Foods Corp. of the US along with Robert Ducas, and Chivers and Sons Ltd (a British canner and jam-maker). The seagull logo with Birds Eye across the wings was in use just after the second world war but I am not certain when it was introduced. In 1943 Birds Eye's UK operation was bought out by Unilever, but Birds Eye remained an independent division. In the mid 1950s Birds Eye built a large factory at Lowestoft (then a major fishing port). By the early 1950s, after a host of problems with production, raw materials, and distribution,
Birds Eye was firmly established. In 1952, it opened the “Empire’s largest quick-frozen food factory” in Great Yarmouth. In the 1960s the Birds Eye factories were in Humberside, Lincolnshire and East Anglia with major factories at Great Yarmouth, Lowestoft, Kirkby, Grimsby, Hull and Eastbourne. Each produced a range of goods as they were constrained by seasonal growing and fishing patterns. By the 1950s Birds Eye had worked with Figidaire and Prestcold to develop open refrigerator cabinets to be sold to retailers. By the 1960s about a third of all white fish (cod, haddock, plaice, sole and coley) were going to the frozen food industry and Birds Eye were also importing blocks of frozen fish from Scandinavia. By the end of the 1960s they operated a nation wide system of frozen storage (actually run by SPD, 'Speedy Prompt Delivery', another Unilever subsidiary). As more people bought home freezers the sales of frozen foods increased steadily and by this time Birds Eye, backed by Unilever, had a 60 percent market share. In 1975 Birds Eye (in the UK) merged with Walls Ice cream.
Fishery companies were very interested in frozen foods, Mudd & Sons, Smethursts Ltd and Associated Fisheries (who owned Eskimo Foods Ltd) all operated frozen food plants in the pre war era.
Macfisheries (owned by Unilever and based in the Hebrides) began selling deep frozen fish in the 1960s, prior to this they had operated a chain of fresh fish shops around the country. Macfisheries were one of the users of the AFP road-rail container run by BR.
Ross Group began as a family fish merchanting business which expanded in the 1930s into trawling and in the late 1940s into the freezing, first of fish, and then of vegetables. In 1959 Ross Group acquired Young's, a company specialising in the supply of fresh and frozen seafood. In 1961 Ross Group acquired Sterling Poultry Products Ltd. During the 1960s Ross Foods and Young's developed their distributive networks both by building new depots and by acquiring wholesale distributors. Production capacity at Ross Foods' factories at Grimsby and Westwick in Norfolk was greatly increased. By 1965 Ross Foods and Young's together supplied 5 per cent of frozen foods sold by retailers and 12 per cent of catering packs. In the late 1960s Imperial Group gained control of both Smedley's and Ross Group Ltd (not including that firms trawlers a new organisation called British United Trawlers Ltd was created by the merger of the trawling interests of Ross Group and Associated Fisheries Ltd). Imperial Group was renamed Imperial Foods in 1971.
Findus (originally a Swedish fruit firm) started deep freezing food in 1945, the brand appeared in the UK after World War Two and opened a factory in Newcastle.
By the early 1950s several large firms dominated the market, Birds Eye Foods Ltd, Eskimo Foods Ltd (owned by Associated Fisheries Ltd), Fropax Ltd (a subsidiary of Union International Co Ltd), J Lyons & Co Ltd (producing under the 'Frood' brand), Ross Group Ltd and Smedley's Ltd.
Fig ___Frood logo
In addition, a number of companies were engaged in the freezing of fish and the supply of frozen foods to the catering trade. In 1959 Findus began to distribute frozen foods which it imported from its Swedish parent company and itself to process frozen foods on a limited scale. By the late 1950s Birds Eye had achieved a dominant position in the retail market, having the advantages of economies of scale in it procurement and distribution of frozen foods.
A series of amalgamations reduced the national brand makers to three by the early 1970s. In 1963, the frozen food interests of Union International, Associated Fisheries and J Lyons merged to create Fropax Eskimo Frood Ltd. In 1968 a new operating company (which later became Findus Ltd) was formed from the merger of Fropax Eskimo Frood and the original Findus company. Also in 1968 Imperial Group Ltd acquired Smedley's Ltd and in 1969 Imperial Group took over the Ross Group Ltd, which had earlier acquired Young's Seafoods Ltd (a supplier of specialist fish products). Birds Eye also grew during this period, but not by acquisition of their competitors.
In 1974 Findus (UK) Ltd became a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Nestle Group On the merger of the Findus and the Fropax Eskimo Frood interests the 'Findus' brand was adopted as the principal brand of the combined enterprises, replacing the 'Eskimo' and 'Frood' brands. In the 1970s new and larger factories were built at Aberdeen and at Grimsby to replace existing factories there and the vegetable processing plant at Cleethorpes was extended. In 2009 a major fire destroyed the factory in Newcastle and the problems with Icelandic banks going bust saw the firm close it's UK arm.
Fig ___Later (post 1974) Findus logo
In the 1950s, 60s and 70s several new firms were set up, in the mid 1950s Jus-Rol Ltd, Primecut Foods Ltd (then W B Wright Provisions Ltd), Northray Foods Ltd (then Northray Farm Products Ltd) and Kraft Foods Ltd (then Brains Frozen Foods Ltd). In the early 1960s McCain International Ltd set up in the UK and later in the decade Potato and Allied Services Ltd and Frozen Quality Ltd were established. In the early 1970s Country Range Ltd and King
Harry Foods Ltd, White House Foods Ltd., Fife Growers Ltd and Wold Growers Ltd in 1974.
Non of these new companies were able to achieve the scale of production of the majors, Northray Foods Ltd, Frozen Quality Ltd, Fife Growers Ltd and Wold Pea Growers Ltd all originated as agricultural co-operatives. A number of meat companies also entered frozen food processing, notably FMC Ltd (chiefly through its Harris subsidiary), Dalgety Ltd (chiefly through Dalgety-Buswell Ltd and Dalgety Frozen Foods Ltd) and Thos Borthwick & Sons Ltd (through Freshbake Foods Ltd). Several fishing and fish merchanting companies developed the processing of frozen food, notably Associated Fisheries Ltd, J Marr (Fish Merchants) Ltd and Chaldur Frozen Fish Co Ltd.
One odd firm was Sidwell and Company Ltd who supplied imported frozen fish to wholesalers for distribution to retailers and fish friers.
There were a surprising number of frozen food factories in the UK, the following summary is from a Government report from the later 1970s. By the mid 1970s Ross Frozen Foods had factories in Grimsby C, D and G (Fish), Grimsby E (Vegetables), Grimsby M (Meat dishes), Fakenham in Norfolk (Vegetable repacking), Westwick in Norfolk (Vegetables and fish), Aberdeen, Hull and Lowestoft (Fish) and Henley-in-Arden in Warwickshire (Mousse).
Smedley operating in Spalding, Lincolnshire (Vegetables), Wisbech in Cambridgeshire (Vegetables), Faversham in Kent (Vegetables and meat products)
Ross Poultry had works at Sutton Benger in Wiltshire (Fried chicken products), Hartlepool and Cleveland (Chicken portions), Flixton in Suffolk (Chicken burgers), Aberdeen (Prepared chicken dishes)
Young's operated 18 factories producing frozen fish and frozen shellfish
products and 1 factory producing frozen cream.
At the end of 1974 Findus operated five factories at the following locations: Cleethorpes (Vegetables, fruit and prepared foods), Humberstone Road, Grimsby (Fish and meat products), Orwell Street, Grimsby (Fish products), Aberdeen (Fish products) and Hull (Fish products).
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