Meadow Lea

Last updated

Meadow Lea is one of Australia's leading brands of polyunsaturated margarine spreads, founded in Sydney in 1932 by Oliver Triggs who claimed to be the first person in Australia to manufacture table margarine, [1] and owned since 1986 by the Australasian food company Goodman Fielder. In 1995 it had a 25% share of margarine sales, and was the top-selling margarine brand since 1973. [2]

Contents

History

Meadow Lea Margarine was founded by Oliver Triggs in early 1932, [3] [4] [5] when manufactured in Edgeware Road, Newtown, Sydney. [6] However its origins go back at least a year, when Triggs made copha butter and then margarine in Melbourne, while running a small grocery shop at 6 Elizabeth Street, north Richmond. [7] In about April 1932 Triggs moved to Sydney, which had more favourable margarine regulations, and sales of Meadow Lea grew rapidly. Shortly afterwards back in Melbourne, Nuttelex was founded by Hugh Halpin in a factory in Gordon Street, south Richmond (now part of Cremorne), where his brother James Halpin had made copha butter since 1929. Also formed in Fitzroy, Melbourne was Birmacley margarine (by Colin Birt, Leslie McMaster, George Buckley and Harriet McMaster), with which Triggs may have been involved. Later in 1932 the Meadow Lea factory was moved to 34 Wellington Street, Newtown. [8] By March 1933 there were 70 employees working in the factory. [9] In 1934 Triggs hired James (Jim) Andrew Armstrong as a sales manager, on commission, for country regions in New South Wales. By 1939 75% of all margarine consumed in Australia was manufactured in 10 factories in NSW. [10] In 1941 Triggs and Armstrong reached an agreement whereby Armstrong would sell his roughly 25% sales commission share in the Meadow Lea Margarine Company to Triggs' son Ken in 1945 when he turned 21. In 1941 the factory was moved to 1 Alice Street, Newtown, leased from Sydney Confectionery Limited, with the fit-out costing £15,000. [11]

In 1945 Armstrong sold his 25% share of Meadow Lea to Ken Triggs, and retired from the company. In 1956, Oliver and Ken Triggs sold the Meadow Lea Margarine Company to Vegetable Oils Proprietary Limited, a subsidiary of the publicly listed company Allied Mills Limited.

On 30 April 1986 Allied Mills was taken over by Fielder Gillespie Davis Limited, part of the Goodman Group Limited (New Zealand), to create Goodman Fielder Limited. In 2015 Goodman Fielder was purchased by Wilmar International and First Pacific, and in 2019 First Pacific's half share was acquired by Wilmar, one of the largest listed companies by market capitalisation on the Singapore Exchange.

Products

In 2010 the MeadowLea product range consisted of six varieties:

Oliver Triggs

Oliver Francis Triggs (21 March 1895 – 28 August 1962) founded the Meadow Lea table margarine brand in 1932, finally selling it to Allied Mills in about 1956. Triggs was born in Ascot Vale in Melbourne and grew up on a small farm, fought with the Light Horse in World War I, then trained as a tailor, before opening a corner grocery shop and making copha butter. After copha butter was banned in Victoria to support the butter industry and pure butter sales, Triggs moved to Sydney in early 1932. He was married in September 1922 to Nita Alice Beck (or Bek, 13 April 1895 – 16 June 1974), a seamstress, and had four children, Kenneth, Audray and Marian (non-identical twins, born 20 June 1930), and Jill. Triggs claimed to be a cousin of brothers AB Triggs and Inigo Triggs.

From August 1935 until 1975, the family home was Edgewater, 3-5 Sutherland Crescent, Darling Point, [12] bought from George Wirth of Wirth Brothers Circus which cost £30,000, [13] and was then-called Margworth, built for Wirth in about 1929-30 in the Spanish style. Its water front gardens (including a tennis court [14] and swimming pool) were sold to the neighbouring Carthona in the 1950s, when Edgewater was divided into three homes (one on each floor) with Triggs retaining the top floor. Triggs also owned the cruiser Sea Mist circa 1939-41 (possibly HMAS Seamist which sank the Japanese midget submarine M-21 in the attack on Sydney Harbour in 1942, but there may have been two cruisers called Sea Mist made by Lars Halvorsen Sons in 1937-39, hence the confusion).

From 1939 to 1946 Triggs owned the approximately 2,000 acres (810 ha) Kyalla Park sheep farm and horse stud near Orange, which had the first electrified sheep-shearing shed in Australia (built in about 1910 by the previous owners, the Stuart family, builders of Luna Park Sydney). Subsequently the property was slowly subdivided and sold off by the Dutton family, so that it was around 150 acres (61 ha) when owned by the Napier family from 1982 to 2021. In 1939 Triggs' racehorse Gilltown won the Moonee Valley Cup (and again in 1940) and City Tattersall's Gold Cup, and ran in the Melbourne Cup (leading almost to the home turn). In c1960-74 Triggs' wife Nita owned 'Landers' (with c11 acres, now subdivided No. 6) in The Avenue, Burradoo, Bowral, where her granddaughters kept riding horses.

Ken Triggs

Kenneth Oliver Triggs OAM (5 April 1924 – 11 July 2022), the only son of Oliver Triggs, was a director and 25% shareholder in Meadow Lea from 1945 until the company's sale to Vegetable Oils Proprietary Limited in about 1956. He subsequently became a farmer and Chairman of the NSW Egg Board, a manufacturer of polystyrene containers, Chairman of Mutual Home Loans Fund of Australia Limited and Information Electronics Limited. In 2003 he became the Secretary of the Auburn sub-Branch of the Returned and Services League of Australia (RSL), and was made a life member of the RSL in 2008. He received an Order of Australia in 2011 for service to veterans and their families. [15] [16] He married Ruth Carol Donnison (2 August 1926 - 4 May 2023) on 4 July 1950 and they had two sons, David (b1957) and Andrew (b1961). He built in c1960 a single storey house at 4B Wentworth Street, at the top of Point Piper, next door to horse trainer Tommy Smith, near Kilmory (Ave Maria Retreat House), which was sold in c1972 and demolished c2010. The couple divorced in c1976, and on 20 June 1986 Triggs married Lesley-Anne Woodward, who had 4 children from her previous marriage.

Meadow Lea house

The art deco heritage listed residential home named Meadow Lea at 22 Sydney Road, East Lindfield, Sydney, was built on four housing lots and completed in about 1941 for James Andrew Armstrong, at the time co-proprietor (25%) of the Meadow-Lea Margarine Co. In 1945 the pool and grounds were used in the filming of A Son Is Born (released 1946), [17] which included in its cast John McCallum, whose brother Ian later married Oliver Triggs' daughter Audray. The house was sold in 1948 for £17,000 to Azzalin Romano, [18] of the nightclub restaurant Romanos, who had sold his racehorse Bernborough in 1946 to Louis B. Mayer for £93,000. In 1955 the house was sold for £25,000. [19] In 1996 it was purchased by Daniel Kalanderian, the co-founder of the Sydney store, Victoria's Basement, for $1.415 million, who added a new wing and put it on the market in September 2010 for $7.5 million. [20] It was for sale in 2014 for $10 million, and in 2020 the south gardens were sub-divided by Kalanderian into a 1,162sqm block with a new five-bedroom house, numbered 22A Sydney Road, which was for sale in April 2022 for $8.5 million as never-been-lived-in. [21]

Meadow Lea House Meadow Lea House.png
Meadow Lea House

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Margarine</span> Semi-solid oily spread often used as a butter substitute

Margarine is a spread used for flavoring, baking, and cooking. It is most often used as a substitute for butter. Although originally made from animal fats, most margarine consumed today is made from vegetable oil. The spread was originally named oleomargarine from Latin for oleum and Greek margarite. The name was later shortened to margarine.

Meadow Fresh is a New Zealand dairy brand. It is owned by Goodman Fielder. The modern brand came into being as the result of a brand swap in September 2005 between Dairy Foods, owned by Graeme Hart, and New Zealand Milk, owned by Fonterra.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anchor (brand)</span> Brand of dairy products

Anchor is a brand of dairy products that was founded in New Zealand in 1886, and is one of the key brands owned by the New Zealand based international exporter Fonterra Co-operative Group. In Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan, Fonterra uses the Fernleaf brand instead of Anchor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LJ Hooker</span> Australian real estate company

LJ Hooker is one of Australia's largest real estate groups, with 600 franchise offices and 6,000 people engaged in residential and commercial property sales and property management. The company was founded in 1928 by Sir Leslie Joseph Hooker and after being sold to a private company for 20 years, the company returned to family hands in 2009.

Nine Radio is an Australian media company, owned by parent company Nine Entertainment Co. and headquartered in North Sydney, New South Wales. The company operates radio stations nationally in the capital cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth, as well as regional Queensland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Terraplane</span> Motor vehicle

The Terraplane was a car brand and model built by the Hudson Motor Car Company of Detroit, Michigan, between 1932 and 1938. In its maiden year, the car was branded as the Essex-Terraplane; in 1934 the car became simply the Terraplane. They were inexpensive, yet powerful vehicles that were used in both town and country. The Terraplane name was used for both cars and trucks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Sargent (businessman)</span> Australian businessman

George Sargent (1859–1921) was an Australian businessman. George and his wife Charlotte Sargent (1856–1924) were both pastry cooks and caterers. Together with their son, Foster Sargent (1878–1924), they founded the company that made Sargent's meat pies in 1906.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Goodman Fielder</span> Multinational food manufacturer

Goodman Fielder is an Australian manufacturer, marketer and distributor of bread, smallgoods, dairy products, margarine, oil, dressings and various food ingredients. Its main operations are in New Zealand, Australia, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and New Caledonia, with over 40 manufacturing sites. The company employs over 5,000 people, and has more than 120 brands.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Twisties</span> Australian snack food

Twisties are a type of cheese curl corn-based snack food product, available mainly in Australia, and other Oceanian countries such as Papua New Guinea, New Caledonia, Vanuatu and Fiji, the Southeast Asian countries Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Brunei, and the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. They are also available in Europe, but marketed as Fonzies, and in France as "Belin Croustilles". It was launched in 1950 by the General Foods Corporation. The brand name is owned by The Smith's Snackfood Company. While originally an Australian-owned company, Smith's was acquired in August 1998 by Frito-Lay, the second largest producer of snack foods in Australia, which in turn is owned by American multi-national PepsiCo. In Malaysia, Twisties is a product of Mondelēz International, after having been a part of Danone and later, Kraft Foods previously. In Thailand, the Twisties trademark is owned by Lay's, which like The Smith's Snackfood Company, is owned by PepsiCo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Darrell Lea</span> Australian chocolate and liquorice company

Darrell Lea is an Australian company that manufactures and distributes chocolate, liquorice and other confectionery. Its headquarters is based in the Sydney suburb of Ingleburn. After 85 years under the ownership and control of the Lea family, the company went into voluntary administration in 2012 leading to its acquisition, sale and restructuring under new ownership.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lolly Gobble Bliss Bombs</span>

Lolly Gobble Bliss Bombs are an Australian snack food made by the Greens food company.

Mojo was an Australian advertising agency formed in Sydney by Alan Morris ("Mo") and Allan Johnston ("Jo") in 1979. Its lineage can today be traced to the Australian offices of Publicis, an Australian subsidiary of the French multinational advertising and communications company holding Publicis Groupe. Those offices traded as Publicis Mojo from the late 1990s until 2016.

Nuttelex is an Australian manufacturer of margarine. First manufactured in 1932, its namesake brand is the oldest brand of margarine in Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beryl Bryant</span> Australian stage actress and theatrical producer

Beryl Annear Bryant was an Australian stage actress and theatrical producer born in America who was active in the 1930s and 1940s. She was responsible for first bringing the plays of Patrick White to the stage. Her career had many parallels with that of Doris Fitton and her Independent Theatre.

Allan "Jo" Johnston is an Australian advertising creative executive and copywriter who was successful as a jingle writer, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s. He was born in Adelaide, Australia. Together with his long-time business partner Alan Morris, he formed the Australian advertising agency Mojo which enjoyed much Australian and some international success in the 1980s and whose name survived until 2016 as Publicis Mojo, the Australian subsidiary of the French multinational advertising and communications company holding Publicis Groupe.

Alan "Mo" Morris was an Australian advertising creative executive, a copywriter who enjoyed particular success in the 1970s and 80s. Together with his long-time business partner Allan Johnston, he formed the Australian advertising agency Mojo which enjoyed much local and some international success in the 1980s and whose name survived till 2016 as Publicis Mojo, the Australian subsidiary of the French multinational advertising and communications company holding Publicis Groupe.

Warrnambool Cheese & Butter Factory Company Holdings Limited (WCB) is an Australian-based company manufacturing dairy products, majority-owned by Saputo Inc., a Canadian company, that manufactures a range of dairy products under various brands. The business is based in Allansford, Victoria and is the oldest dairy processor in Australia, having been established in 1888. It owns cheese brands CHEER and Cracker Barrel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Municipality of Newtown</span> Former local government area in New South Wales, Australia

The Municipality of Newtown was a local government area of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The municipality was proclaimed as a borough in 1862 and, with an area of 1.9 square kilometres, was centred on the suburb of Newtown, including parts of Erskineville and Enmore. The municipality was divided into four wards: Kingston, Enmore, O'Connell and Camden. In 1949 under the Local Government (Areas) Act 1948, Newtown Municipal Council was merged with the larger neighbouring City of Sydney which was located immediately to the North, although parts were subsequently, from 1968, moved into Marrickville Council. Mayors included Lilian Fowler (1938–1939), the first female mayor in Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boonah Butter Factory</span> Food production in Boonah

The Boonah Butter Factory is a heritage-listed former butter factory in Boonah, Scenic Rim Region, Queensland, Australia. Constructed in 1916, it is a prominent landmark at the intersection of Boonah-Rathdowney Road and Railway Street on the northern entry to Boonah. During the first part of the twentieth century, it was one of the most modern butter factories in the Commonwealth, the largest butter factory in the Southern Hemisphere, had the second highest output of butter in Queensland and was a major supplier of dairy products to Brisbane. The former Boonah Butter Factory office, which is currently the premises of Flavours Cafe, is on the Local Heritage Register of the Scenic Rim Regional Council in acknowledgement of the site's historic, aesthetic and cultural significance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hoadley's Chocolates</span> Australian confectionery company

Hoadley's Chocolates was an Australian confectionery company founded in 1913 famous for the Polly Waffle and Violet Crumble chocolate bars. The company was bought by Rowntree Mackintosh Confectionery in 1972, which would then be acquired by Nestlé in 1988.

References

  1. ↑ Death Of Mr O. F. Triggs, The Sydney Morning Herald, 1 September 1962, page 8
  2. ↑ "Meadow Lea takes a bold step back to the high ground". Australian Financial Review. 15 January 1996. Retrieved 10 September 2020.
  3. ↑ The Farmer and Settler, 26 May 1932, page 10
  4. ↑ The Biz, Fairfield, 19 August 1932, page 2
  5. ↑ The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 November 1932, page 7
  6. ↑ Sydney Morning Herald obituary, 1962 (and other press articles).
  7. ↑ Sands & McDougall directory of Victoria, 1930, page 1887, column 2 middle - State Library Victoria.
  8. ↑ Sydney Morning Herald, 19 Oct 1932 page 20.
  9. ↑ Sydney Morning Herald, 23 March 1933 page 8.
  10. ↑ The Mercury (Hobart, Tas), 1 August 1939 page 2.
  11. ↑ Sydney Morning Herald, 7 March 1941 page 1.
  12. ↑ "Storks held baby dolls". The Sun . No. 1915. New South Wales, Australia. 10 December 1939. p. 16 (Women section social). Retrieved 10 January 2022– via National Library of Australia.
  13. ↑ "£30,000 home sold". The Sydney Morning Herald . No. 30, 448. New South Wales, Australia. 5 August 1935. p. 10. Retrieved 10 January 2022– via National Library of Australia.
  14. ↑ "The life of Sydney". The Daily Telegraph (Sydney) . Vol. III, no. 118. New South Wales, Australia. 6 August 1938. p. 8. Retrieved 10 January 2022– via National Library of Australia.
  15. ↑ "Search Australian Honours, Name: TRIGGS, Kenneth Oliver, Award: Medal of the Order of Australia", itsanhonour.gov.au, Australian Government, archived from the original on 29 April 2014
  16. ↑ Bartok, Di (26 January 2011). "Australia Day honours". Parramatta Advertiser. Archived from the original on 22 July 2012.
  17. ↑ The Guardian (Perth, WA), 7 November 1947, page 4
  18. ↑ Truth (Sydney, NSW), 20 June 1948, page 3
  19. ↑ Chancellor, Jonathan (5 September 2010). "Trophy estate with trimmings". The Sydney Morning Herald. Fairfax Media. Archived from the original on 29 April 2014.
  20. ↑ Belle Property website listing, September 2010. Archived 7 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  21. ↑ Welling, Kathryn (27 Apr 2022, updated 25 May 2022) East Lindfield new home on Meadow Lea grounds has eight-person lift and heated pool realestate.com.au website.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.