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Former Melbourne Meat Preserving Company

Other Name Hume Pipe Company Location Van Ness Avenue,, MARIBYRNONG VIC 3032 - Property No B4730 File Number B4730 Level Regional

[1/1] B4730 Hume Pipe Company

Statement of Significance

Meat canning became really important in world trade in the late 1860s, when a major export trade developed between Australia and Britain. This trade was effectively pioneered and for some years dominated by the Melbourne Meat Preserving Co. Established in 1868, it employed several hundred workers to operate the first large scale meat cannery in Australia. It provided the inspiration and model for many later meat canning companies as well as trained personnel. The main buildings of the company are substantially intact, designed as an open-plan factory on several levels, an adaptation of English industrial design. In its day the factory was commended for its efficiency, cleanliness and automation.
The Humes Pipe Co, established in 1911, pioneered in the production of centrifugally-spun concrete pipes, a process invented in South Australia by E J & W R Hume. In 1920 the process received a world-wide patent and factories were constructed in New Zealand, South Africa, Malaysia, England, Singapore, and U.S.A. The Maribyrnong factory was the largest concrete pipe factory in the Southern Hemisphere and is the oldest remaining Humes factory in Australia. Humes pipes were used throughout Australia and many parts of the world for water supply, sewerage, irrigation and drainage works. The firm pioneered a new technology and exported its innovations throughout the world, The Australian process of making concrete pipes bacame world famous; it is still the basic method used by a large part of the world's concrete pipe industry.
Classified: 04/03/1982