Fray Bentos (food brand) facts for kids
The Fray Bentos food brand is famous for its tinned meat products. These products started with corned beef and later included meat pies. You can find Fray Bentos in the United Kingdom, other parts of Europe, and Australia. The brand began in the late 1800s. Its name comes from the port of Fray Bentos in Uruguay. This is where the food was first made and packed until the 1960s. Today, Baxters owns the brand in the UK. They make the products in Scotland. In Australia, the Campbell Soup Company makes and sells Fray Bentos steak and kidney pies.
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What is Fray Bentos Today?
The Fray Bentos brand is well-known in the United Kingdom. It sells many kinds of tinned meat pies. These include steak and kidney pie and minced beef and onion pie. Since 2011, Baxters has owned the brand in the UK. They make Fray Bentos products at their factory in Fochabers, Scotland. Besides pies, the range also has tinned meat puddings and tinned meatballs. They also make microwaveable pasta and rice dishes with meat.
Fray Bentos products used to be a common food in the UK. However, sales have gone down in recent years. In 2011, reports said sales had stayed at about £30 million per year for ten years. Tinned meat products like Fray Bentos are now seen as a cheaper option. The Financial Times newspaper said that Fray Bentos products might get "sneers" (disapproving looks). But they also have a "cult following" in the UK. Baxters calls Fray Bentos "an iconic British brand."
The Campbell's Soup Company makes and sells steak and kidney pies in Australia. They use the Fray Bentos brand name there.
The History of Fray Bentos
The Liebig Years: 1873–1924
In 1865, a German chemist named Justus von Liebig started the Liebig's Extract of Meat Company in Britain. This company built a factory in Uruguay. There, they made a beef extract product. This product was later sold as Oxo. In 1873, the factory started making tinned corned beef. This corned beef was sold in Britain under the name Fray Bentos. The name came from the town in Uruguay where the factory was located.
Liebig registered Fray Bentos as a trademark in 1881. It was meant for glue and "extract of meat." But it was mostly used for corned beef. In fact, Fray Bentos became so famous that it meant "corned beef" to many people.
Fray Bentos corned beef was sold to working-class people. The tins were also perfect for army food. They weighed just one pound and were easy to carry. When the Boer War started, the company made a lot more money. This was because they supplied corned beef to the British Army in South Africa. Fray Bentos corned beef was also given to soldiers in World War I. It was so popular that soldiers used "Fray Bentos" as slang for "good." One of the early British tanks in the Battle of Passchendaele was even called "Fray Bentos." This was because the men inside felt like tinned meat.
The Vestey Years: 1924–1968
In 1924, the Vestey Group bought Liebig Extract of Meat Company. This included the Fray Bentos brand. Vestey renamed the Uruguayan factory Frigorífico Anglo del Uruguay. It was also known as the "Anglo Meatpacking Company."
Fray Bentos was most popular during World War II. It supplied meat to the Allies. In 1943 alone, Fray Bentos sent over 16 million cans of corned beef to Europe. British soldiers fighting in North Africa called it "Desert Chicken." The Anglo factory in Fray Bentos was very busy. At its peak, it had over 5,000 workers from more than 50 countries. They processed 400 cows every hour. Because of the high demand for Fray Bentos products, the Uruguayan money became more valuable than the US dollar at that time.
Right after the war, Fray Bentos products were a common food in Britain. The company added more products, like tinned meat pies. These included steak and kidney and minced beef and onion pies. In 1958, Vestey started making Fray Bentos pies in England. Production moved to a factory in the London Borough of Hackney.
In 1964, the Fray Bentos corned beef brand faced a problem. There was an outbreak of typhoid in Aberdeen. Three people died. It was traced back to a tin of Fray Bentos corned beef from South America. The corned beef had become contaminated. This happened because untreated water was used during the cooling process when it was made.
At the end of the 1960s, Vestey sold the Anglo factory to the Uruguayan government. In 1968, Vestey sold Liebig to Brooke Bond. They then formed a new company called Brooke Bond Liebig.
Changes in Ownership: 1968–2013
Unilever bought Brooke Bond Liebig in 1984. In 1993, the Campbell Soup Company bought Fray Bentos from Unilever's Brooke Bond division. The Hackney factory closed that same year. Production moved to Campbell's own factory in King's Lynn.
Campbell's later sold its rights to the brand in the UK to Premier Foods in 2006. This was part of selling Campbell's UK operations. However, Campbell's still makes and sells steak and kidney pies in Australia. They use the Fray Bentos brand name there. Premier Foods closed the King's Lynn factory in 2007. They moved Fray Bentos production to their factory in Long Sutton, Lincolnshire.
In 2011, Princes Group bought Premier Foods' canning division, which included Fray Bentos. But after an Office of Fair Trading investigation, Princes had to sell Fray Bentos right away. This was due to competition rules. Baxters, the current owners, bought it. They announced that production would move to their factory in Fochabers, Scotland. The move was finished in 2013.
Baxters and Beyond: Since 2013
Baxters added new products to the Fray Bentos range. These included "deep fill" pies (which were stopped by 2022) and microwaveable bowl products. During the COVID-19 lockdowns in the United Kingdom, sales of canned goods grew a lot. Fray Bentos sales increased by 29% in 2020.
