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Iceberg Butter
One of our blog readers, SK, reminded us of this butter he remembered from his younger days. He said:
"During my primary schooldays in 1960 to 1964, we used to have butter in a can . It was a round can with red & blue colouring & it had a picture of a Polar Bear."
Ipoh Remembered responded with:
"Iceberg" tinned butter was made by Holdenson and Nielson, an extremely successful Australian dairy concern founded in Melbourne by two Danish immigrants in the 1880s. By 1907 it was said (Picture 2 above) that:
"Holdenson and Nielson's butter factory is the largest un Australia inasmuch as it turns out more butter than any other single factory, some weeks reaching 70 tons. Besides the factory in Melbourne, and another in Warrangul, acquired ar a later date, the firm conducts an extensive business in cheese, bacon, eggs, dairy machinery and utensils &c."
It was one of several "district factories." In Australia as late as the 1950s the company's line was that their butter was "manufactured fresh daily from cream from your own district."
Iceberg" tinned butter was imported into Malaya by Cold Storage as early as the 1920s. A two-pound tin might have cost about $1.20 at the time. (The tin shown in my previous message, with the label on the top, contained 12 ounces and was sold in the late 1920s. After the war a number of different packaging options were tried, including one with an additional label on the side of the tin; this is perhaps the version you remember from your childhood.)
After the war Iceberg butter was a Malayan export! People in Ipoh, Penang, and Singapore used to buy several tins at a time from Cold Storage and send them back regularly to friends and family in the UK — because, even into the 1950s, butter in the UK was still strictly rationed. If I recall correctly, as late as 1952 each household was entitled to no more than 2 ounces of local butter per week, so to receive a two-pound tin each month would have been the height of good fortune.
Incidentally the other package shown in my previous message, made of foil with no polar bear, is from the 1960s.
You asked if the brand is still available. It is not. Andreas Nielson died in 1903 and Poul Holdenson in 1948. Their brands survived into the 1960s but were sold to other firms (notably Petersville). Holdenson and Nielson itself was wound up in the mid-'90s."
Editor's note:
Ipoh Remembered also provided the extract and the two old advertisements above. The right hand picture was captioned as "Is this it? From 1960."
And for the fourth picture he said "Also available without a bear!"
The caption for the photograph of the factory says" Factory foreman Mr Moser, ice cream maker Lawrence William Smith and butter maker Athol Wall.