Vestey Holdings
Company type | Private |
---|---|
Predecessor | Vestey Group |
Headquarters | , |
Website | vesteyholdings.com |
Vestey Holdings, formerly Vestey Group and previously also known as Vestey Brothers, is a privately owned UK group of companies comprising an international business focused mainly on food products and services. The company has owned vast holdings overseas, mainly in South America and Australia, and continues to own some.
The Vestey family were estimated to be the second wealthiest family in Britain (after
Union International, formerly the core of the Vestey family business as the Union Cold Storage Company, entered receivership in 1995. The company has been restructured several times.
Current holdings and governance
As of August 2020[update] Vestey Holdings owns Vestey Foods, Albion Fine Foods & FineFrance UK, Cottage Delight, Donald Russell (
Vestey Foods (incorporated 16 November 1994)
The 3rd Baron Vestey (19 March 1941 – 4 February 2021), great-grandson of co-founder William Vestey (later Lord Vestey), was Chairman of the Vestey Group from 1995 until his death in 2021.
George Vestey has been CEO of Vestey Holdings since 2010, and his brother Robin Non-Executive Chairman since 2013 (after becoming a main board director after their father Edmund’s retirement in 2004).[7]
The family was still immensely wealthy in 2015; 160th on the Sunday Times Rich List 2015, with an estimated fortune of £700 million. Actor Tom Hiddleston is the great-great-grandson of co-founder Sir Edmund Vestey, 1st Baronet.[8]
As of 2020[update], the Vestey family’s farming interests are mainly in Brazil, in both the
History
William and his younger brother
William Vestey earlier worked in stockyards in Chicago in the late 19th century, and realised that the meat waste could be used in products which were then in short supply in Britain. He and Edmund started a canning business, before foreseeing that the meat could be worth even more if the vast supplies of beef in the Americas could be transported and delivered fresh rather than canned, so they first experimented with a friend's cold store. The invention of the first ammonia-compression plant enabled refrigerated shipments, and their business grew.[2]
International expansion
The first expansion was into China, in the early 20th century, where the company developed a huge egg processing enterprise. Creating their own shipping company, the Blue Star Line, they supplied outlets in the UK, USA, Europe and South Africa for over fifty years.[10]
In 1911, the Vestey brothers expanded into
In 1912 they purchased for £250,000 the Ord River cattle station in the East Kimberley region of
In 1915, the brothers, after being refused a request for income tax exemption made to David Lloyd George, moved to Buenos Aires to avoid paying income tax in the UK. The family later administered the business through a Paris trust that enabled it to legally avoid an estimated total of £88m in UK tax until the loophole was closed in 1991.[2]
In 1924, Vesteys bought the
It is said[by whom?] that by 1930 Vesteys had 30,000 employees worldwide and a net value of £300,000.
The Vestey family were estimated to be the second wealthiest family in Britain (after the King) in 1940. In 1980, it was discovered that the company had operated a tax avoidance scheme, and Vestey Brothers was the largest privately owned multinational company and the largest retailer of meat in the world in the 1980s.[8][2]
UK developments
In the course of their expansion, Vestey bought a number of other companies, acquiring
In the middle of the 20th century, Vestey companies dominated the UK
1966 Gurindji Strike, Australia
By the middle of the twentieth century, the Vestey Group had acquired a large amount of
In 1966, this unfair treatment, coupled with earlier dispossession of their land by the colonial government, sparked the
Shipping
The first two ships for the Blue Star Line (Pakeha renamed Broderick, and Rangatira renamed Brodmore) were bought in 1909, and the company registered on 28 July 1911 in London and Liverpool with a capital of £100,000.[citation needed]
In 1946 the Vesteys also became founders of Repremar Shipping, a Uruguay-based ship agency which was then taken over a few decades later by the Pena family, who to this day remain in control of the Repremar Group of Companies.[18]
The line owned a number of refrigerated ships (
The company had to be rebuilt twice, in the years following the world wars, before being sold in 1998.[10]
21st century
By 2000, the vertically integrated model was broken up, and separate companies created to run farming, cold storage, and food import and distribution businesses.[10]
2005 Venezuela handback
In Venezuela in 2005, state troops occupied a cattle ranch owned by the Vestey Group, under a 2001 land use reform programme instituted by the Hugo Chávez government. In March 2006, the Group reached an agreement with the Venezuelan government, ceding two ranches to the state while retaining ownership of eight.[19]
Philanthropy
There was a "Vestey Chair of Food Safety and Veterinary Public Health" at the Royal Veterinary College, University of London recorded in 1992,[20] and 2000,[21] "the first post of its kind in the UK".[22]
Former subsidiaries
- The Blue Star Line was sold to P&O Nedlloyd for £60 million in 1998.
- Dewhurst butchers – sold to Lloyd Maunder 2005, entered administration in 2006.[23]
Further reading
- Marshall, Andrew (18 August 2015). "Vestey still a big ag player". Farm Online. (Australia)
- "On the wrong side of history". The Sydney Morning Herald. 8 December 2007. About Edmund Hoyle Vestey.
References
- ^ Bryant, Chris (7 September 2017). "How the aristocracy preserved their power". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 May 2018.
- ^ a b c d "Heirs and disgraces". The Guardian. 11 August 1999. Retrieved 10 May 2018.
- ^ "Businesses –". Vestey Holdings. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
- ^ "Vestey Foods Limited". Endole. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
- ^ "Our Companies". Vestey Foods. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
- ^ "Who We Are". Vestey Foods. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
- ^ "People". Vestey Holdings. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
- ^ a b Farrell, Thomas (26 April 2015). "Meat the House of Vestey". Let's Look Again. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
- ^ a b "Our History". Vestey Foods. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
- ^ a b c d e "Heritage". Vestey Holdings. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
- ^ "Mr S. W. Copley Dead". The West Australian. Vol. 53, no. 16, 026. Western Australia. 8 November 1937. p. 20. Retrieved 7 January 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
- ^ "Meatworks Project For N. Territory". The Canberra Times. Vol. 27, no. 7, 878. Australian Capital Territory, Australia. 21 November 1952. p. 1. Retrieved 18 March 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
- ^ Victoria Government. Retrieved 9 August 2020.
- ISBN 978-1-85109-431-8.
- ^ "Uruguay serves up slice of history". BBC News. 28 October 2008.
- ^ a b Lawford, Elliana; Zillman, Stephanie (18 August 2016). "Timeline: From Wave Hill protest to land handbacks". ABC News. Retrieved 9 August 2020.
- ^ Ward, Charlie (20 August 2016). "An historic handful of dirt: Whitlam and the legacy of the Wave Hill Walk-Off". The Conversation. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
- ^ "REPREMAR". www.repremar.com. Retrieved 15 April 2023.
- ^ Arie, Sophie (23 March 2006). "Vestey gives up ranches in 'land grab'". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 16 September 2015.
- ^ "Appointments: University appointments". The Independent. 12 September 1992. Retrieved 13 August 2020.
- ISBN 978-0-8342-1323-4. Retrieved 13 August 2020.
- ^ "Geoffrey Mead (United Kingdom)". World Poultry Science Association. 12 February 2014. Retrieved 13 August 2020.
- ^ Frizzell, Amy (28 March 2006). "Dewhurst adds to demise of butchers' shops". The Independent. Archived from the original on 5 November 2012.