Vestey Holdings facts for kids
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| Predecessor | Vestey Group |
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United Kingdom
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Vestey Holdings is a private company from the United Kingdom. It mainly focuses on food products and services around the world. The company used to own many properties in other countries, especially in South America and Australia, and still owns some today.
In 1940, the Vestey family was thought to be the second richest family in Britain, right after the King. In the 1980s, Vestey Brothers was the biggest private international company and the largest seller of meat in the world.
Union International was once the main part of the Vestey family business. It was called the Union Cold Storage Company. This part of the company faced financial trouble in 1995. The company has changed its structure several times over the years.
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What Vestey Holdings Owns Today
As of August 2020, Vestey Holdings owns several different companies. These include Vestey Foods, Albion Fine Foods & FineFrance UK, Cottage Delight, Donald Russell (which are butchers), and Western Pension Solutions.
Vestey Foods was started in 1994. It includes many smaller companies like Vestey Foods UK, Vestey Foods Benelux, Vestey Foods France, Vestey Foods International, Vestey Foods Baltics, and Vestey Foods Middle East. This company mainly buys, processes, and sells products made from meat, fish, seafood, dairy products, fruits, vegetables, and easy-to-prepare foods. It sells its products in 70 countries to stores, restaurants, and other businesses.
The 3rd Baron Vestey was the great-grandson of one of the company's founders, William Vestey. He was the Chairman of the Vestey Group from 1995 until he passed away in 2021.
George Vestey has been the CEO of Vestey Holdings since 2010. His brother Robin became the Non-Executive Chairman in 2013.
The Vestey family was still very wealthy in 2015. They were ranked 160th on the Sunday Times Rich List with an estimated fortune of £700 million. The actor Tom Hiddleston is also related to the family; he is the great-great-grandson of another co-founder, Sir Edmund Vestey, 1st Baronet.
As of 2020, the Vestey family's farming businesses are mostly in Brazil. They are involved in both the cattle industry and growing sugar cane. They also have a plan to plant 12,000 hectares of trees to supply eucalyptus wood to the iron ore industry in Brazil. The family also owns two wine companies in Australia: The Lane Vineyard in South Australia and Delatite Wines in Victoria, Australia.
Company History
William Vestey and his younger brother Edmund started the Vestey business in 1897. It grew from their family's butchery shop in Liverpool. They were among the first to use refrigeration. They opened a cold storage facility in London in 1895 and then built more stores across the UK, Russia, the Baltic nations, and Western Europe. The company provided a lot of food to the growing population in the UK during the Industrial Revolution.
William Vestey had worked in meat processing yards in Chicago in the late 1800s. He realized that meat waste could be used to make products that were needed in Britain. He and Edmund started a canning business. Later, they thought it would be even better to transport fresh beef from the Americas instead of just canned meat. They tried this idea with a friend's cold storage. When the first ammonia-compression plant was invented, it allowed them to ship refrigerated goods, and their business grew even more.
Growing Around the World
The company first expanded into China in the early 1900s. There, they built a huge business for processing eggs. They also created their own shipping company, the Blue Star Line. This allowed them to supply their stores in the UK, USA, Europe, and South Africa for over 50 years.
In 1911, the Vestey brothers started to produce, process, and distribute meat themselves. They bought farms and meat processing plants in Venezuela, Australia, and Brazil, as well as meat plants in New Zealand and Argentina. In the UK, they bought market stalls at the Smithfield Market in London and many butcher shops across the country, including the Dewhurst the Butchers chain.
In 1912, they bought the Ord River cattle station in Western Australia for £250,000. In 1914, they started the North Australia Meat Company in Darwin, Northern Territory in Australia, but it closed after three years. In the same year, they bought the 3,000 square kilometer Wave Hill Station in the Northern Territory of Australia.
In 1915, the brothers moved to Buenos Aires to avoid paying income tax in the UK. The family later managed their business through a trust in Paris. This allowed them to legally avoid paying an estimated total of £88 million in UK tax until a new law closed this loophole in 1991.
In 1924, Vesteys bought the Liebig Extract of Meat Company in Uruguay. They changed its name to Frigorífico Anglo del Uruguay, which sold Fray Bentos meat extract spread.
It is believed that by 1930, Vesteys had 30,000 employees worldwide and was worth £300,000.
In 1980, it was found that the company had used a method to pay less tax. In the 1980s, Vestey Brothers was the largest private international company and the biggest seller of meat in the world.
Developments in the UK
As Vestey expanded, it bought other companies. They acquired Oxo and London's Oxo Tower when they bought the Liebig Extract of Meat Company.
In the mid-1900s, Vestey companies were very important in the UK's meat trade. They sold refrigerated and canned meats, as well as leather and other products made from animals. They had saved a lot of money and used it to lower their prices. This helped them compete with US-owned companies and largely push them out of the UK market. Vestey developed the Dewhurst the Butchers chain across the country. This chain was eventually sold in 1995 because of more competition from large supermarket chains. Dewhurst was one of the first butcher shops to have glass windows, which was new at the time. Before that, meat was often displayed openly. The business also owned the Downsway supermarket group, which had 80 stores in East Anglia when it was sold in 1978.
1966 Gurindji Strike in Australia
By the mid-1900s, the Vestey Group owned a lot of grazing land in Australia. They used many Aboriginal Australians as cheap workers. These workers were paid much less than other workers, sometimes only receiving salt beef, bread, tobacco, flour, sugar, and tea instead of money. Samuel Vestey, 3rd Baron Vestey, through the company, owned the Wave Hill Station in Australia at that time.
In 1966, this unfair treatment, along with their land being taken by the government earlier, led to the Gurindji strike. This strike, also known as the Wave Hill walk-off, happened at Wave Hill. It was a very important event for the land rights movement in Australia and lasted for eight years. With a lot of public support, the Whitlam government talked with Vestey. A small piece of land at Daguragu/Wattie Creek was given back to the Gurindji people. This was an important first step towards getting their land back.
Shipping Business
The Vestey company bought its first two ships for the Blue Star Line in 1909. The company was officially registered on July 28, 1911, in London and Liverpool.
In 1946, the Vesteys also helped start Repremar Shipping. This was a ship agency based in Uruguay. A few decades later, the Pena family took over Repremar Shipping and still runs it today.
The Blue Star Line owned many refrigerated ships, called Reefers. Their business later grew to countries like Egypt and China. They carried both passengers and various food items. Blue Star Line was finally sold to P&O Nedlloyd for £60 million in 1998. However, most of the refrigerated ships were kept by Vestey's Albion Reefers company. This company later joined with Hamburg Süd to form Star Reefers, which was then sold in July 2001.
The company had to be rebuilt twice after the two world wars before it was sold in 1998.
21st Century Changes
By 2000, the company's old way of doing everything themselves, from farming to selling, was changed. Separate companies were created to handle farming, cold storage, and importing and distributing food.
2005 Venezuela Land Agreement
In Venezuela in 2005, government troops took over a cattle ranch owned by the Vestey Group. This happened under a land reform program started by the Hugo Chávez government in 2001. In March 2006, the Vestey Group reached an agreement with the Venezuelan government. They gave two ranches to the state but kept ownership of eight others.
Helping Others
There was a special position called the "Vestey Chair of Food Safety and Veterinary Public Health" at the Royal Veterinary College, University of London. This was recorded in 1992 and 2000 as "the first post of its kind in the UK."
Companies No Longer Owned
- The Blue Star Line was sold to P&O Nedlloyd for £60 million in 1998.
- Dewhurst butchers – sold to Lloyd Maunder in 2005, and then faced financial difficulties in 2006.
