First shipment of chilled beef for England

First shipment of chilled beef for England

The first shipment of chilled beef bound from New Zealand to England is loaded, in 1933. The experiment was not a great success, because chilled meat deteriorated faster than frozen meat. The trade depended on a well-organised system for handling and selling the product, which proved an ongoing problem. Today most of New Zealand’s chilled beef is shipped to Japan and Korea, where it fetches a much higher return per kilo than the frozen beef sent to the US to be made into hamburgers.