MacRobertsons Old Gold Chocolate History

Posted 2014-04-05 by finy ⇒ follow

For those interested in the history of chocolate in Australia, I have a 1921 book about MacRobertson chocolates.

The book is called A YOUNG MAN AND A NAIL CAN.

In the year 1880, a young Australian decided to commence business as a Confectionery manufacturer. His stock-in-trade comprised the nail can, a few pounds of sugar, a threepenny tin pannikin, a small deal table, and twenty plaster-of-Paris moulds -plus a great fund of energy, ambition, patience, enterprise and foresight, and his "factory" was his mother's bathroom!

He manufactured on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and then carried the sweets from shop to shop on Fridays and Saturdays. This went on for some time and after saving his meagre profits he was able to extend his tiny "factory" and enlarge his plant.

At the time this book was written (September 6th, 1921), this was a vast organisation giving employment to 2000 with an annual wage-bill of over 400,000 pounds.

Cocoa beans came from Trinidad, Ceylon, Samoa, Africa and South America., and they had hydraulic machines press out a portion of the natural fat known as cocoa butter and used largely for chocolate making. The expressed cocoa mass was then pulverised, sifted and automatically packed into tins ready for the breakfast cup.

The book with 150 pages, has photos on most pages with descriptions of this early Australian chocolate factory.

Here are just a few of the pictures and there are also many more colour plates of their various chocolates of the time.