Everything about The Vestey totally explained
The
Vestey Group (
Vestey Group Ltd) (formerly
Vestey Brothers) is a privately owned
UK group of companies, comprised of an international food product business (that includes meats,
dairy products, frozen vegetables,
bakery products, food services and trading) and significant
cattle ranching and
sugar cane farming interests in
Brazil and
Venezuela.
Business Origins
William Vestey (later Lord Vestey) and his younger brother
Edmund (later Sir Edmund) established the Vestey empire in 1897 from a family butchery business in
Liverpool. They were a pioneer of
refrigeration, opening a cold store in
London in
1895.
The Vestey brothers were initially sent to
South America in an attempt to make their fortune because the economy there was booming. They started by buying game birds and storing them in the cold stores of
American companies before shipping them to Liverpool.
International expansion
These early activities soon developed into importing
beef and beef products into the UK, which in turn led to them owning cattle
ranches in
Brazil,
Venezuela and
Australia and their own meat processing factories in
Argentina,
Uruguay,
New Zealand and
Australia (in
1914 Vestey Brothers built a meat processing works at Bullocky Point,
Darwin, Australia, but closed its operations in 1920 after the
Darwin Rebellion).
In 1915 the brothers, after being refused a request for
income tax exemption made to
David Lloyd George, moved to Buenos Aires to avoid paying income tax in the UK. The family later administered the business through a Paris trust that enabled it to legally avoid UK tax until the loophole was closed in 1991 .
Vestey Brothers also developed a business importing
eggs from
China, and during
World War II they were a major importer of
powdered eggs.
It is said that by
1930 Vesteys had 30,000 employees world wide and a net value of 300,000 pounds.
Shipping
To ship the meat back to the UK the Vesteys created their own shipping company, the
Blue Star Line. Their first two ships (
Pakeha renamed
Broderick, and
Rangatira renamed
Brodmore) were bought in
1909, and the company registered on July 28
1911 in London and Liverpool with a capital of 100,000
pounds.
The line owned a number of refrigerated ships (
Reefers), and business later expanded to countries as far apart as
Egypt and
China, carrying passengers in addition to various foodstuffs. Blue Star was finally sold to
P&O Nedlloyd for 60,000,000
GBP in
1998, although most of the refrigerated ships were retained by Vestey's
Albion Reefers subsidiary, which later merged with
Hamburg Sud to form Star Reefers, finally sold off in July
2001.
UK developments
In the course of their expansion, Vestey bought a number of other companies, acquiring
Oxo and London's
Oxo Tower through the purchase of the
Liebig Extract of Meat Company.
In the middle of the 20th century, Vestey companies dominated the UK
wholesale and
retail meat trade, selling refrigerated and canned meats, as well as
leather and other by-products. Having saved cash reserves for the purpose, they entered into a
price war with the US owned importers to largely drive them from the UK market. Vestey developed the country-wide
Dewhurst chain of butchers shops, which was eventually disbanded in
1995 in the face of increasing competition from the
supermarket chains. Dewhurst were the first to introduce the innovation of
glass windows on butcher's shops - previously meat had been exposed to the elements and
pollution.
Involvement overseas
The Vestey Group had acquired a large amount of land in
Australia, and using the
Australian Aboriginal people as cheap labour. This sparked the
Gurindji strike in 1966, where the Group was forced seven years later by
Gough Whitlam's government to return part of the land they owned to its indigenous owners.
Similar events took place in
Venezuela, when in 2005, Venezuelan troops occupied a cattle ranch owned by the Vestey Group, under a 2001 land use reform programme instituted by the
Hugo Chávez government. In March 2006, the Group reached an agreement with the Venezuelan government, ceding two ranches to the state while retaining ownership of eight .
Current situation
After a period of major restructuring in the late 1990s, Vestey Group today consists of
Angliss International
and significant cattle ranching and
sugar cane farming interests in
Brazil and Venezuela.
Lord (Sam) Vestey, born 19 March 1941 is the great grandson of
1st Lord Vestey, and the current head of the family and Chairman of the Group. He owns the 6,000
acre (24 km²)
Stowell Park Estate at
Stowell Park,
Gloucestershire, valued at
£15,000,000 as well as a villa in
Nice and a Townhouse in
Belgravia.
The Vesteys endowed the
Vestey Professorship of Food Safety and Veterinary Public Health at the
Royal Veterinary College,
University of London.
Main subsidiaries
Former subsidiaries
The Blue Star Line was sold to P&O Nedlloyd for 60,000,000 GBP in 1998.
Blue Star Ship Management Ltd
Dewhurst butchers - disbanded 1995
Union Cold Storage CompanyFurther Information
Get more info on 'Vestey'.
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