The Oamaru Freezing Works (Former), opened in February 1886, are thought to be New Zealand’s oldest surviving freezing works. They provide a link to the early years of one of the country’s most important industries. The relatively unaltered state of the Oamaru Freezing Works (Former) makes them an important example of an early freezing works complex.

The first shipment of frozen meat to Britain in 1882 marked the beginning of New Zealand’s frozen meat industry. The meat for that first shipment was frozen on-board ship by a freezing plant. The industry needed land-based meat works and the New Zealand Refrigerating Company built the country’s first freezing works at Burnside near Dunedin in 1882. Three freezing works opened in 1883 – in Wellington, Belfast (near Christchurch) and in Tomoana (in the Hawke’s Bay).

In 1885, the New Zealand Refrigerating Company built a freezer and store in Oamaru on a site close to the railway line and the port. Prominent Oamaru architect Thomas Forrester designed the works. The freezing works began processing meat on 2 February 1886. Sheep for the works were slaughtered at the company’s Eveline Refrigerating Works, five kilometres north by rail. The North Otago Times recognised that the freezing works were the ‘centre of an extensive industry.’ The freezing works started with one Bell-Coleman refrigerator driven by a water motor connected to council water mains. The company installed a steam engine and boiler in case the water supply failed. The works could process three hundred sheep daily and store 12,000 frozen carcases.

Very soon, the works needed to process more carcases and the company added to the buildings and the refrigeration system. In 1889, the North Otago Times described the limestone buildings and their recent alterations. They are, the paper wrote, ‘rectangular in shape, one storey high, and measure 160ft by 50ft [49 by 15m]; and the engine room, stokehole, offices, etc., are placed on the east side of the premises, while the siding and loading platform extend along the whole west side.’ The original buildings had two storerooms and two freezing rooms. An extension to the larger store meant there was enough room for 20,000 carcases. The stokehole was also extended, giving enough space for the new boilers, and an additional ten feet [3m] were added to the height of the chimneystack. The company built a residence for the engineer at the rear of the works.

The North Otago Times told readers about insulation of the freezing chambers walls, giving an interesting insight into the technology: the three-foot thick walls were made up of two walls of stone with a sealed air cavity between them. There was another ‘hermetically sealed space between the timber and the stone, then a solid wall of charcoal 10 inches thick all around, above and below, the whole of the building, the charcoal being increased to about 16 inches above. There is also a layer of asphalt in the ceiling and floor, while the whole building is scrimmed and papered throughout to prevent leakage of air, and covered with galvanised sheet iron in the inside to prevent any possibility of fire.’

Even with the alterations, the works could not meet the needs of this rapidly growing industry. The number of freezing works built in less than twenty years shows the growth of the frozen meat industry – in 1900, there were twenty-five works, fourteen in the North Island and eleven in the South Island. Company structures changed with the growth – the New Zealand Refrigerating Company amalgamated with the Christchurch Meat Company in 1905. The Christchurch Meat Company acquired the Burnside and Oamaru freezing works.

In 1906 general manager William Murray recommended that the Oamaru works close and that North Otago stock be railed to Burnside or Smithfield, in Timaru. Historian Cyril Loach writes that by this time the ‘Oamaru plant was antiquated and inefficient.’ Another five years passed before the company decided to rebuild at Pukeuri, north of Oamaru. The new Pukeuri Freezing Works opened on 5 March 1914 – with 90,000ft [8361m²] of floor space and the capacity to process 3,000 lambs a day.


In 2013, the former Oamaru Freezing Works stand as a reminder of the beginnings of New Zealand’s frozen meat industry.