"One of the other boys had interviews lined up for two jobs and he decided to take the job with the Fish Merchants Association. The other interview was for Ellerman’s Wilson Lines in Royal Dock Chambers opposite the Royal Hotel (where the A180 flyover is now). The manager rang up the head of the Technical School to ask if they had any other boys and they sent me along. I had the interview on the Thursday, on Friday they asked for my reports and I started on the Monday! The job was as a Junior Clerk which in the beginning meant lighting coal fires and making the tea."
Even if Eskimo Foods didn't last as long as Birds Eye, the Grimsby frozen food brand earned its own Dinky toy
George progressed within the firm, taking his transport and shipbrokers exams and becoming involved with freight handling for local firms. This included exporting Titanium Dioxide from the Titan's (later ICI and then Huntsman) factory and paper from the Peter Dixons mill. "A Lincoln firm called Riley Newsome produced prefabs for export to Australia, and when we had a ship lined up for Riley Newsome we would also use it for the reels of newsprint Peter Dixons exported to Australian tabloids and broadsheets."
George was also involved in forwarding consignments for local fish companies including Grimsby Frozen Products. Set up by fish merchants Joe Sprott and Phil Appleyard after the war, the firm converted the old railway refreshment room on the docks into a processing plant and sold frozen food under the "Eskimo" brand.
Freezing had started out as a way of preserving wholesale supplies. Home refrigerators would not become common until the 1960’s. Even when Clarence Birdseye pioneered the concept of quick freezing in 1929, it took several technical refinements and much salesmanship by the American firm of Birds Eye to put frozen food into the home.
Smethurst had established a Grimsby factory in the late 19th Century to process dried fish, and began quick freezing fish at its Ladysmith Road site in 1935. In 1938 Birds Eye Ltd was incorporated as a joint venture in the UK and subsequently bought by Unilever in 1943. The 1950’s finally saw the start of retail sales of frozen food, although this was still something the housewife would buy from the corner shop to cook straightaway for tea. Early frozen foods were often stored in the retailer’s ice cream cabinet.
During this period, Smethursts was bought up by Unilever, the conglomerate which also owned Macfisheries and the UK patent for the American Birds Eye brand. In 1957 the three companies were merged, and the original Smethurst factory in Grimsby was expanded into a five acre Birds Eye site.
Meanwhile, over in Norway, the Freia Chocolate Company had found its activities limited during the war by lack of access to cocoa beans. It had acquired a a Swedish fruit and vegetable company called Fruit Industries whose telegraphic address was Findus. In 1945 the company began selling frozen vegetables under the Findus brand. In 1954 it branched out into skinned and boneless frozen fish fillets. Such was the success of Findus that it began looking for a way to break into the UK market.
The Findus frozen food range in the early 1960's
A Covent Garden wholesaler was used to distribute products in the South East and their success convinced Findus to establish a UK production base. Luckily, they saw the benefits of making that base in Grimsby. The fishing industry was already in decline, but in trying to attract new business, the council always a strong case for the geographic location and disciplined workforce.
In 1958, former chemist Sven Ove Lindgren began working from a rented caravan, hiring local staff to build and then operate a new factory on the Humberston Road site next to the new Northern Cold Store.
The former Findus site in Humberstone Road, now under the ownership of Youngs
This cold store had been built by a Danish firm called Helsingborg Freesus on the Ladysmith Road allotments. George first encountered Helsingborg Freesus when they asked Ellerman's to handle their Customs Clearance. The cold store was being built at the instigation of Findus, although it was actually operated by a Swedish company called Northern Cold Store. Ellerman's arranged the import of the timber moulds for the concrete beams, and glass fibre mattresses about a foot thick, which were used for insulation. A small ship would have a fully cargo of netting, piled deck high and weighing 45 tonnes.
Production of Findus Fish Sticks (Fish Fingers)
Unlike Eskimo Foods, which sourced its product locally, Findus' philosophy was to take ingredients of the highest quality, wherever it was found. Despite being based in Grimsby, their fish would be caught by its fleet in Hammerfest and turned into filleted blocks on the island of Bornholm before being sent to Grimsby to be made into fish fingers. .Green beans were grown in Rimini, peas and spinach grown in Skane. Because Findus imported everything, George got to know Sven through going to see him at his flat opposite Peoples Park to get the customs papers signed.
"In March 1962, the company decided to run its own UK distribution. I applied for a job and got it. At that time the offices were Terrapin buildings (a type of portable office) in the back of the factory. Apart from Sven, there was an office manager who dealt with accounts admin and personnel, and a production manager and his assistant. I was working with Ave Bolin, a Norwegian distribution manager. When I went on holiday, I had to promise to ring in every morning and talk through the mail with him. As I had to go off to London, Liverpool and Southampton to check imports (such as asparagus from New Zealand) it became very inconvenient to have to phone in and talk through the work with him and eventually he agreed that I could have an assistant."
Findus gradually amended the names of some of their products to suit the British market. The Findus Steak Burgers had to be renamed Beef Burgers, because that was what sold in the UK. Fish Fingers were referred to as Fish Sticks in most of Europe, but changed their name to Fish Fingers because Birds Eye had pioneered that name in 1955 in the UK.
"Just after I joined the company, leaving behind a secure job at Ellerman’s, on May 2nd 1962 the directors of Marabou AB and Freia A/S (the ultimate owners of Findus) announced that they had agreed to form a new company called Findus International Ltd, which was 50% owned by Nestle. I wondered if I had made the right move, but we were assured it would secure the future of the company."
Findus' Grimsby production line featured in the official history of Findus (published just before the Nestle buy-in)
George found that life in a multi-national could have its rewards, "In 1966, Nestle decided they would hold a transport summit at their head office overlooking Lake Geneva. I was told that I would be representing the UK at the meeting. When I pointed out to them that I was getting married on the day before the meeting, they said that they would pay for Pauline to travel down with me. So, we married on the Saturday afternoon and then drove down to Harwich, caught the ferry over to the Hook of Holland and then motored over the Autobahn to Lake Geneva. Luckily we had enough time after the conference to travel around Lake Como, Bellagio and Belgium before returning to Grimsby."
"I'm not a kid!Where's the bones?" Warren Mitchell as Alf Garnett promotes fish fingers from Findus (1968)
As frozen food gained acceptance, Findus tried to differentiate their product from the competition. Birds Eye Fish Fingers were perceived as appealing to children, so the BBC’s politically incorrect character Alf Garnett was used to promote Findus Fish Fingers, showing that they were full fish products fit for an adult. At the same time, Findus had began developing new products to tempt children.
The TV advert launching the ill-fated Captain Thunder Fish Bites from Findus (1967)
" Findus had a test kitchen which developed new products, and someone came up with the idea of selling fish cubes marketed as Captain Thunder's Fish Bites. They had a big launch with a cartoon pirate called Captain Thunder on a TV commercial. But the product was a disaster. No-one knew how to cook them - with a fish finger you only have to turn them once but each packet had 20 fish bites the size of an oxo cube and it was more work to keep turning them over. "
Captain Thunder skewers a tasty fish bite on his cutlass
" It was always difficult to keep new products a secret once they were placed in Salvesen's store, and Captain Thunder's Fish Bites attracted a lot of attention. I've often wondered if it was a coincidence that Captain Birdseye started in the same year."
However, the British frozen food market was already consolidating. Grimsby Frozen Products (Eskimo) was bought up in 1963 by the J Lyons Group which had pioneered frozen ready meals and had already absorbed Vestey's Associated Fisheries Group (Frood frozen vegetables). The merged group was renamed Fropax Eskimo Frood but in 1968 J. Lyon agreed with Nestle to merge their frozen food interests.
Mick Coburn from Grimsby Frozen Products(Eskimo) became managing director of the merged company which now owned two competing sites - Findus Humberston Road and the Eskimo site in Cleethorpes. The two companies had different philosophies. "Whereas Findus imported the best products, Eskimo's philosophy was to source everything within the UK. " Although Bill Stephenson, George's opposite number at Eskimo decided to get another job, George foresaw that the reprieve was only temporary.
The former Salveson XPO Logistics site
"Luckily, in 1972 I heard that Arthur Coutts, the former store manager of Salveson's Cold Store, had been offered the job of setting up a new cold store at Kirk Sandall outside Doncaster for Transport Development Group. They needed someone to do the Admin and I was offered the job." However, by 1974 the success of the cold store meant that it needed to become a company in its own right, with a qualified accountant doing George's job. Luck was still with him though and he got a job as Admin Manager at Salvesons.
The Leith firm of Christian Salvesen had been founded in the 1800's by the younger son of a successful Norwegian trading family. From 1954 to 1967 Salvesen's was experimenting with the concept of factory ships - stern trawlers which processed and froze the catch on-board. The firm built a cold store just outside Grimsby Docks to receive the processed fish. However, the factory workers had to be paid merchant seaman's wages and this cost undermined any efficiencies which may have been gained by processing at sea.
It's rumoured that Salvesen's lent Northern Cold Stores some of the money to build the Ladysmith Road store, and whatever the facts, Salvesen's ended up owning the third party cold store. Barry Sealey (whose father, Ted, had been the original Cold Store manager) was in charge of the Cold Storage division and its importance to the firm was reflected in the fact that he was made Group Managing Director.
George stayed with Salvesen's for seven years, before moving to a Cosalt subsidiary called Addasystems, The company had just won a contract to supply 400 prefabricated bungalows to Algeria after an earthquake. George was initially hired to purchase materials and ship the finished units off to Algeria. He was then asked to supervise construction in Algeria. After the completion of this contract, George became office manager at builders merchants Thompson Eyre & Denny Mott (later Wickes).
The flow and ebb of the Grimsby frozen food industry took more twists and turns. In 1974, Lyons sold its stake in Findus and in the 1980's Findus pulled out of Grimsby completely, allegedly encouraged by government grants to relocate to Longbenton, near Newcastle. The construction, abandonment and devastation of Birds Eye's state-of-the art factory is another story that almost symbolises the decline of Grimsby in one generation. Food production continued at the neighbouring former Findus Site on Humberston Road under Youngs, but with Salveson changing ownership from Norbert Dentressangle to XPO Logistics, the Cold Store no longer fitted in with their global plans. At the time of the interview, the store was empty, up for sale and under threat of demolition. Luckily, in 2018 the store was acquired by Youngs Seafood, to support the neighbouring production site. .
