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Perfection
Perfection Ice Cream Co. (Ltd) was registered in Christchurch
on 17 September 1926, with premises and factory at 300-304
Manchester Street. Shares were owned by W.S. "Bill"
Callick and D. Mitchell.
They may well have regretted choosing this address, as within
a year, their neighbour, a Mr and Mrs Hawke, had taken them
to court twice, the first time claiming "they had lost sleep
and been caused annoyance by the noise and vibration of the
machinery", the second time for a dispute over builder's
access down an alleyway between their house and the factory.
In the second case, Perfection's builder, a Mr Mulholland
was the unfortunate target of Mrs Hawke's wrath, "airing
her grievances by heaving bricks, threatening with garden
forks
and unburdening
herself
of
offensive epithets".
The Court ruled against the Hawke's, and they were fined £2 and costs.
In December 1926, Perfection advertised themselves as "Sole Suppliers 'Eskimo
Pies' ", so they must have held the manufacturing licence for Christchurch.
Photo:
Perfection Ice Cream Co.staff, ca. 1932.
-
Laurie Kench, via Owen Norton collection.
Perfection Ice Cream Company Ltd was registered as a private
company in October 1927.
In 1929, Perfection was involved
in a three-way merger, instigated by the Tai
Tapu Dairy Co., and also involving the
Christchurch
wholesale ice cream manufacturing plant and factory of W. R. Cooke
& Sons Ltd, a national chain of tea rooms. This followed
a visit to the U.S.A. by Tai Tapu's Secretary, Mr Charles
P Agar, who had decided that the company should enter the
ice cream
manufacturing
business,. Tai Tapu first took over W.R. Cooke, and then
the resulting company took over Perfection.
The new business
retained the Perfection name, Agar became Chairman of Directors,
and a £32,000
expansion and upgrade of the Perfection factory began.
At this time, Perfection had a manufacturing capacity of
1000 gallons per day, a fleet of seven delivery vehicles,
and distributed as far afield
as
Cheviot,
Timaru,
Greymouth
and Hokitika.
21 December 1929: The Perfection IceCream Company is buying
its cream supplies direct from the farmers. These must survive
a test of 40 per cent, butter fat, or prove at least equal
in standard to the quality supplied for table consumption.
With the other ingredients it is put through a pasteuriser
and passes to a homogeniser or viscoliser, which, with a
pressure of 25001b to the square inch, emulsifies the fat
globules, making a smooth product. This is then pumped over
a-direct expansion cooler, and its temperature reduced to
a few degrees above freezing point. It gravitates then into
glass-lined ageing vats, where it remains for 36 to 48 hoars
for the ripening process. From there it gravitates into churns
and finally into cans. An inspection of the new plant was
made yesterday by Mr C. P. Agar (chairman) and other members
of the Board of Directors.
Photo:
The Perfection Ice Cream Co. factory, 300 Manchester St.,
Christchurch, ca. 1932.
-
Laurie Kench, via Owen Norton collection.
Perfection
Ice Cream advertising sign, with cat,
1940s?
-
Laurie Kench, via Owen Norton collection.
Laurie
Kench with Perfection
Ice Cream truck, 1940s?
-
Laurie Kench, via Owen Norton collection.
During WWII a 50 person capacity air
raid trench was installed in the factory by Christchurch
architecture firm Trengrove and Blunt.
Photo:
Filling cartons at the Perfection Ice Cream Co. factory,
October 1945.
Caption:
left - Hank, Phyllis Pullan; right - Laurie Kench, Maurie Marsh,
Ray Sykes.
-
Laurie Kench, via Owen Norton collection.
Cinema
advertisement (glass slide) for Perfection
Ice Cream, circa 1950.
-
Wil Wright, The Film Poster Gallery.
Photo:
The Perfection Ice Cream Co. factory, 1953.
-
Laurie Kench, via Owen Norton collection.
Perfection
Bomb stick novelty wrapper, 1950s?
-
Serendipity Antiques, Timaru.
Perfection Ice Cream Co. Ltd letterhead, 1956.
-
Owen Norton collection.
The Chairman of Perfection Ice Cream Co., Charles Agar (an ex-Deputy Mayor of
Christchurch,
and
ex-President of the Chamber of Commerce),
was
also Chairman of the business that had the local dealership for British Bedford
trucks
- hence
Perfection's all-Bedford fleet:
Photo: Perfection Ice Cream delivery fleet, late 1950s.
- Laurie Kench, via Owen Norton collection.
Sander's
Milk Bar, Main North Road, Papanui, Christchurch, ca. 1960. David
O'Malley.
-
Kete Christchurch. Sanders
Milk Bar.
Perfection
Ice Cream Co. Joy Bar newspaper advertisement, 1961.
-
Tip Top archives.
Perfection
Ice Cream sign, ca. 1960. Firth Signs Ltd.
-
Kirstine Thompson.
Ice
cream truck, Perfection Ice Cream Co. Ltd, Christchurch, 1965
- Kete
Christchurch.
Perfection was taken over by General Foods (Tip Top) in 1961.
- Special thanks to Owen Norton for permission
to reproduce the photos in this article from his collection.
Thanks also to Wil Wright of The
Film Poster Gallery for permission
to reproduce the glass slide cinema advertisement.
Other references and related sites:
Kete Christchurch:
http://ketechristchurch.peoplesnetworknz.info/places_and_streets/topics/show/248-the-history-of-300-manchester-street#.U17o9FWSzAk
Papers Past (National Library of New Zealand digitised newspapers database):
http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/
 Back to
Ice Cream Brands from the Past. |
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The
Joy Bar
New Zealand's iconic Joy Bar was invented in Christchurch in
1948 by the clever people at the Perfection Ice Cream Company.
The original
Perfection Joy Bar was a long rectangular bar
of
ice-cream,
covered
in chocolate,
with
a raspberry
flavoured
sauce through the middle.
The
bar was
packaged in a
rectangular waxed cardboard box,
with a strip of cardboard down one side, which allowed you to
pull the ice-cream up, and out of the package, bite by bite.
Perfection
Ice Cream Co. Joy Bar, 1961.
-
Tip Top archives.
After coming up with what they felt was a winning new product,
the story goes that the management group couldn't decide on a
name.
General Manager Frank Wright, Factory Manager Dennis
'Baldy' Amos, Sales Manager Laurie Kench, and ex-GM Bill Callick
were mulling over the problem, when Frank's 12-year-old daughter
Joy came in. They asked her what they should call the product
and she said "Joy Bar"!
And the rest is history ...
The product was a huge hit, and when Tip Top took over Perfection
Ice Cream Co. in the late '60s, they kept it going.
Although discontinued for several years, Tip Top re-launched
the Joy Bar in 2006, as part of their 70th anniversary celebrations,
and
they
are
still
on
the
market
today.
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In about 1938 my parents purchased
304 Manchester Street, which contained a grocery and fruiterer
shop. It ran along the full length of the north side
of the Perfection Ice Cream factory, and had three garages that opened out on
to the land behind PIC, which had access to Salisbury Street.
Next to where
Baldy Amos lived.
I know not how, but I seemed to have free range within the factory.
I can
remember:-
* Frank Wright, William Callick, Gussie Smith, Jim Scull
* very early on, working in the afternoons and being paid 5 pound a week. I suspect
directly from Bill Callick's pocket.
* as a high school boy working full time in the school holidays, and the girls
(probably Avonside GHS students) closing and incorporating a
wooden spoon in threepenny and sixpenny cartons of ice cream,
which I then put into boxes, and then into the
adjacent freezer
* helping Baldy Amos on the weekends checking that the trucks were freezing,
and
freezer
temperatures
* helping Jim Scull fill jackets with cans of ice cream for dispatch
via Midland or Newman's bus lines
* melting the 14lb bars of chocolate with cocoa butter to make the mix in which
the chocolate bombs were dipped
* filling the holder with wooden sticks from an automatic filler machine and
then putting these into the moulds already filled with ice-cream, and then putting
these moulds into the brine tank, which moved them through a tunnel to then
be removed, put into a drying/chilling tunnel, before being dipped into the chocolate,
and then being chilled again.
* helping Bert Porter in the churn area, filling cans, and
dismantling and cleaning the churns at the end of production
* the engine room
* the new offices with underfloor cork insulation and hot water heating, and
Italian tile exterior
* the artesian well in the NE corner of the factory
* the trucks at night, all lined up in the driveway right through the factory
and hitched up to the ammonia freezing system
* the laboratory next to the staff room
* Mum's hand beater being borrowed to make what I understood was the
first ice cream cake made in NZ. Whipped cream with icing sugar and
cochineal spread over the round cake and then decorated with rosette piping
and 'Merry Xmas'. Kept frozen with dry ice overnight for transport to my
Grandma's for Xmas Day.
* the construction of an air raid shelter in the land behind the
factory during WWII (which after the war my father dismantled)
* as well as that, was the later installation of a massive International Harvester
diesel generator that automatically started if the power cut
* a burglar who jumped down from the brick wall of the factory on to a
small lawn by our back door.
* writing to Laurie Kench when he went overseas in WWII
- Graham Leeming.
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