Board 4: Australia’s Leading Meat Cannery
The Melbourne Meat Preserving Company, established at Maribyrnong in 1868, employed 300 men at peak times, from a variety of trades. Many workers were migrants from England, Ireland and Germany. Output was enormous, e.g. 3,750,059 tins of preserved meat and soups between 1868 and 1874. At slack times, the men were put off and only the foremen kept on. The meat cannery closed in 1886.
