The biscuit bunfight prompted when a big-name US baker came to Melbourne
When Melbourne was Australia’s biscuit capital, a big American baker looked to set up shop here — and a group of local biscuit makers was determined to ensure the Americans’ cookies crumbled.
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Back in the 1960s, Melbourne was a biscuit town – and it was the scene of the biggest shake-up the Australian biscuit market ever saw.
While Arnott’s, the dominant brand today, was a Sydney-based concern, Melbourne was home to a flourishing baking industry that included Weston’s Biscuits, Swallow and Ariell, Guest Biscuits and Brockhoff’s Biscuits.
Weston’s Biscuits, the newest of the brands, was an offshoot of Canadian firm Weston Biscuits in the mid-1950s. Its bakery was located in Grosvenor St, Abbotsford.
The most famous Weston’s brands included Wagon Wheels and Chocolate Wheatens.
Swallow and Ariell’s was established by Thomas Swallow and Thomas Ariell in Port Melbourne in 1854 and is regarded as Australia’s first biscuit company.
A distaste for the ship’s biscuits on their voyages to Australia inspired the men to go into the business, but the focus of the business eventually turned to the rising popularity of “fancy” biscuits, and the company moved to new premises in North Melbourne in the 1890s.
The company made a Teddy Bear biscuit with a bear embossed on a circular biscuit, Dairy Milk Arrowroots, Golliwogs, Tee Vee Snacks, Vanilla Slice, Del Monte Creams and Shredded Wheatmeal biscuits among its range.
Guest’s Biscuits was established in William St, Melbourne, as Barnes and Guest in 1856, then T.B. Guest and Co. from 1858.
The company won awards at international expositions here in Melbourne, in London and in Philadelphia.
By 1883, the T.B. Guest company employed 900 people, and in 1897 the company embraced automation and shifted to a new factory fronting Laurens and Anderson streets in North Melbourne.
By the ‘60s, Guest’s range included Teddy Bears in the style we know today, Golliwogs, Malt-o-Milk, Morning Coffee, Assorted Creams, Bourbon Slice, Clix, Ginger Nuts, Guest’s Orange, Marie and Thin Captains.
Brockhoff’s Biscuits, like Swallow and Ariell and Guests, dates back to gold rush era. It was established by German immigrant Adolph Brockhoff in the 1880 and for many years baked in Anderson Street, North Melbourne – virtually next door to what became the Guest’s factory). The company sought to expand after World War II and in 1953 opened a larger factory and warehouse in Burwood East.
Its favourite biscuit brands included Chocolate Royal, Family Assorted, Salada, Savoy, Cheds and, Shapes.
The Shapes range started in 1954 with the Savoury flavour and soon expanded Savoury, Barbecue, Chicken Crimpy and Onion.
As this 1973 clip shows, the Brockhoff’s Shapes range took some interesting turns.
THE BISCUIT INDUSTRY IN THE 1960s
The baking of biscuits was a lucrative but strangely segmented and state-based industry.
While some brands including Arnott’s, Brockhoff’s and Guests were marketing their products beyond their own states, many did not.
But that began to change between the late 1940s and the early 1960s, when Sydney-based Arnott’s, which began baking ship’s biscuits in 1865 in Newcastle, started swallowing smaller competitors.
Arnott’s took over Motteram’s and Menz’s bakeries in Adelaide (the latter the home of the Yo Yo), Perth’s Mills and Ware and Brisbane’s Morrow’s.
MELBOURNE BAKERIES UNITE
When US giant Nabisco entered the Australian food market in 1960 by taking over cereal and jelly maker Purina, it sounded a warning to Australian biscuit makers.
Arnott’s responded by looking to Melbourne.
By 1962, if formed the Australian Biscuit Company in partnership with Brockhoff’s and Guest’s in a deliberate defensive move to flex more muscle as a united front against the American invader.
Guest’s market share had been shrinking in the post-war era, while Brockhoff’s was in a stronger position with its new manufacturing and distribution base in the eastern suburbs.
The Guest’s and Brockhoff’s brands and many of each company’s product lines were retained and taken nationally. The alliance was known in Victoria, at least, as Arnott-Brockhoff-Guest. Changing consumer tastes had left Swallow and Ariell’s vulnerable by the early ‘60s.
Nabisco, by 1963 seeking a ready-name Australian base, began to court Swallow and Ariell’s, by then a publicly listed company, for a buyout.
But Jack Brockhoff, one of the three brothers at the helm of the Brockhoff family business, feared the impact of Nabisco on the already crowded biscuit market and was not about to give Nabisco an easy foothold.
Jack, the youngest grandson of Adolph, worked shrewdly with Arnott’s directors to bring Swallow and Ariell’s into the Australian Biscuit Company fold in a share market battle with Nabisco that was regarded as one of the greatest corporate battles in Australian history. Following the merger, it was common for Swallow and Ariell’s, Arnott’s, Guest’s and Brockhoff trucks to line up beside one another in the Brockhoff’s warehouse in Burwood East to load their deliveries.
Nabisco went it alone, opening a new plant in Broadmeadows in 1965.
It produced a range of biscuits including the Salada-like Premium and Jatz-like Ritz crackers, Chips Ahoy! chocolate chip biscuits, varieties including Jubilee, and Rum Slice, and its In-A Biskit range, a heavyweight competitor to our homegrown Shapes.
Jack, an astute businessman, saw a limited future for Brockhoff as a stand-alone manufacture, and led his family into a full merger with Arnott’s in 1966.
The company became known as Arnott’s Biscuits Pty Ltd, then Arnott’s Ltd when the company was publicly floated in 1970.
Jack Brockhoff remained on the Arnott’s board until 1984, the year he died.
ARNOTT’S CONSOLIDATES, NABISCO FALLS
Of the Melbourne bakers, the Swallow and Ariell brands were first to fade, but the Brockhoff’s name survived until the late 1970s.
The American firm Campbell’s Soup bought an increasing share of Arnott’s through the 1980s.
The Nabisco brand disappeared in 1991 when Lanes Food Group bought the Broadmeadows plant and the licence to continue manufacturing Nabisco products in Australia.
In 1997, Campbell’s Soup took control of Arnott’s and, for the first time, it fell out of Australian ownership.
Arnott’s closed its only remaining Victorian plant, the old Brockhoff’s factory in Burwood East, in 2002, transferring all production interstate.
The same year, Kraft Foods bought Lanes Food Group, announcing its intention to become a major player in the Australian biscuit market.
George Weston Foods withdrew from the biscuit market in 2004, selling the rights to Chocolate Wheatens, Quattro and Wagon Wheels Arnott’s, to concentrate on other parts of its food portfolio.
Then, just four years into its biscuit manufacturing, it shut its Broadmeadows factory and transferred its biscuit operations to China.
Last year, US private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts bought Arnott’s as part of a deal for Campbell’s entire international operations for a reported estimated A$3.1 billion.
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