Vegemite Celebrates 100 years at South Melbourne

How it started

Vegemite’s beginnings date back to 1922 when the Fred Walker Company (today the Kraft Food Company) occupied the former South Melbourne College site at 76-82 Kerferd Road, Albert Park. The company employed Dr Cyril P Callister, the country’s leading food technologist during the 1920s and 30s, to create an edible paste made out of yeast originally supplied as a by-product from Carlton United Breweries. A national competition to name the new product saw Albert Park sisters Hilda and Laurel Armstrong win the £50 prize money. After this Vegemite hit shelves in Australia on 25th October 1923.

In an attempt to capture the market it shared with the English spread Marmite, the Fred Walker Company changed the name of its product to Parwill (with the slogan “If Marmite then Parwill”) in 1928 but reverted it back to Vegemite in the early 1940s. As Vegemite gained popularity, the Australian Army sent tins in bulk to soldiers fighting in World War II which led to it being rationed throughout the country.

The Kraft Food Company moved into a newly built factory on Riverside Avenue in 1928 at what is now Southbank. After Kraft relocated again to Fishermans Bend in Port Melbourne, where it has remained since 1945, the factory on the southern bank of the Yarra became the home of Allen’s Sweets until it was demolished in 1987.

The current Kraft factory, located at 1 Vegemite Way, Port Melbourne, is owned by Bega Cheese Limited and produces over 22 million jars of Vegemite annually.