Meat Preserving: Heat Processing Introduced (continued)

The Dangar's used no incubator room. They were aware of the need but, shipping most of their production to England, they used the voyage, and, therefore, the weeks at tropical temperatures, as a test period. They accepted such losses as occurred on the journey, some 3-5 per cent, as a normal business hazard. The remainder was, of course, quite sound.

Some of the products were sold in Sydney. Most of them, however, were exported to England, where by this time Richard Dangar was established as the marketing arm of the company. He gave evidence to the committee which enquired into supplies of preserved meat to the Royal Navy and detailed the methods used at Newcastle, when the quality of the Dangar products was scrutinized. They stood the test and were well received. In fact, Richard Dangar was asked to tender for an Admiralty order of 1,000,000 Ibs., but at that time the Newcastle factory was unable to cope with such quantities.

Dangar products were awarded medals in London and in Paris and were judged most favourably by the Lancet Analytical Sanitary Commission which in 1852, in the wake of the navy scandal, critically examined the canned products then available.

Why then did the Newcastle factory last only seven years? The economics of the operation, which were favourable in the beginning were set out in the evidence given by Richard Dangar to the Committee of Enquiry into the naval problems. Meat was cheap initially but the Australian incubus of drought played a part in forcing up cattle prices in the early 1850s. Then the discovery of gold caused prices to rise even further, but the greatest cost was tin plate which had to be imported from Britain, made up into cans at local wage rates, and shipped back to Britain as finished filled cans. It was a problem which Australia faced for another hundred years; it was not until after the Second World War that Australia made its own tin plate.

What was even more difficult to deal with was that skilled men left for the gold diggings; it was a common problem in all the Australian colonies at that time. In addition, the Dangars began just as the Royal Navy problems appeared and the reputation of canned foods suffered. Not only that, the Committee recommended that the Navy manufacture its own canned products and, when this was done, the output from other manufacturers became available to the market, merchant shipping, which the Dangars had been supplying. So the Newcastle cannery closed in 1855 and the first short period of Australian canning came to an end. It was successful technically and, on the whole, commercially. It failed to endure because both in Australia and in England it encountered circumstances which no one could have foreseen or controlled.

All three of these pioneering ventures used the same technology. All processed at atmospheric pressures in baths above the boiling point of water before finishing off the heating after the cans had been sealed. Elliott knew it could be done and worked out the details for himself. He was an innovator. The others paid, presumably, to be taught in London, but the technology was the same in each case (and remained essentially unchanged for the rest of the century).

Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering