Vestey Holdings, formerly Vestey Group and previously also known as Vestey Brothers, is a privately owned United Kingdom 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 the King) in 1940. Vestey Brothers was the largest privately owned multinational company and the largest retailer of meat in the world in the 1980s. In 1980, it was discovered that the company had operated a tax avoidance scheme,

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

Vestey Holdings owns Vestey Foods, Albion Fine Foods & FineFrance UK, Cottage Delight, Donald Russell (butchers) and Western Pension Solutions.

Vestey Foods (incorporated 16 November 1994) owns Vestey Foods UK, Vestey Foods Benelux, Vestey Foods France, Vestey Foods International, Vestey Foods Baltics, and Vestey Foods Middle East. The company's main business is in sourcing, processing and distribution of products made from meat, fish, seafood, dairy products, fruit and vegetables, and convenience foods. It trades in 70 countries, with customers in the retail, food service, wholesale, government and manufacturing sectors.

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).

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.

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.

In 1914, they established the North Australia Meat Company in Darwin, Northern Territory in Australia, but it failed after three years. In the same year, it bought the Wave Hill Station in the Northern Territory of Australia. also known as the "Anglo Meatpacking Company".

It is said 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. The 3rd Baron Vestey, through the company, owned the Wave Hill Station in Australia at the time.

In 1966, this unfair treatment, coupled with earlier dispossession of their land by the colonial government, sparked the Gurindji strike (also known as the Wave Hill walk-off) at Wave Hill. This was a landmark event in the land rights movement in Australia and lasted for eight years. With much public support, the Whitlam government entered negotiations with Vestey and a small grant of land at Daguragu/Wattie Creek was handed back to the Gurindji people, as an initial step towards the final land handback.

The line owned a number of refrigerated ships (Reefers), and business later expanded to countries as far apart as Egypt and China, carrying passengers in addition to various foodstuffs. Blue Star was finally sold to P&O Nedlloyd for £60 million in 1998, although most of the refrigerated ships were retained by Vestey's Albion Reefers subsidiary, which later merged with Hamburg Süd to form Star Reefers, finally sold off in July 2001.

The company had to be rebuilt twice, in the years following the world wars, before being sold in 1998.

Philanthropy

There was a "Vestey Chair of Food Safety and Veterinary Public Health" at the Royal Veterinary College, University of London recorded in 1992, and 2000, "the first post of its kind in the UK".

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.

References

Further reading

  • (Australia)
  • About Edmund Hoyle Vestey.