‘The Jammy’ – IXL & Henry Jones (Mile End South)

The Adelaide press announced in early December 1919 that the jam business of Robert McEwin and Company Ltd of East Adelaide (now College Park) had recently been sold to the Henry Jones Co-Operative.

In June 1920 the Henry Jones Co-Operative bought a 3 acre (1.2 hectare) site from McEwin and Company at the western corner of Nottingham Avenue (later West Beach then Richmond Road) and Railway Terrace, Mile End South for £3,000.

The following month the company bought a 2 acre (0.81 hectare) site on the western boundary from Hume Brothers Cement Company Limited for £3,500. The Co-operative almost immediately began building a factory of 2.65 acres (1.07 hectares) on the site.

The factory, which including its machinery cost around £100,000 to build, was a virtually fire-proof single-storey building with an all-iron roof and concrete and asphalt floors. Its heavy brick walls were 16 feet/ 4.88 metres high on the inside and 19 feet 6 inches/5.94 metres on the outside.

In addition to its substantial workspace, the factory included dining and dressing rooms. It was powered by electric motors but in the event of a power failure had a backup electricity generating plant driven by steam engine.

The factory’s 135 feet/41.15 metres high brick chimney stack had a diameter of 12 feet/3.66 metres at its base and 6 feet 6 inches/1.98 metres at its top. The chimney was also a spectacular advertisement for the factory’s main output with the letters ‘IXL JAMS’ spelt out in huge white glazed tiles down three sides.

The factory included an 800 feet/243.8 metres railway siding linking it to the Mile End goods yard. The factory, which opened in December 1920, was known by locals for many years as ‘the Jammy’.

The factory was soon employing around 500 workers, mainly women, who were regarded by factory administration as more dextrous than men. The manufacture of different products within the factory required different procedures. 

In the case of jam making, the factory’s main activity, the constituent ingredient, for example apricots or strawberries, was first fed into 30, 6steamed copper boilers. The factory had a 160,000 gallon underground tank to store rainwater for use in the boilers. Each boiler could produce the equivalent of 150 tins of jams per minute.

From the boilers the jam was transported by elevator to automatic filling machinery which could fill 60 tins per minute. The factory could manufacture from plain tin sheets approximately 250 cans of 4 different sizes per minute. Sealing machines closed the tins, which were then cleaned and labelled. 

During the apricot season the factory could produce 1,000 cases, each containing 4 dozen tins, per day.

With canned fruit, the constituent product was taken in at the western end of the factory where it was peeled, cut and cored by rows of workers. (At the peak of the fruit season in the mid-1920s as many as 6,000 cases of pears, for example, were delivered to the factory per day from around the state).

The fruit would then be canned; graded syrup would be added prior to canning if desired. The cans were then cooked, cooled and passed through a lacquer bath which gave them their lustrous appearance and guarded against rust.

The packed cans were transferred to the warehouse where they were stacked, stored and labelled. The machines could label at a speed of 100 cans per minute.

The plant also had a separate area for making tomato sauce and was capable of producing 60 bottles per minute. Much of the output of the Adelaide factory was for overseas export. 

The Co-Operative’s jam production doubled in Australia during the Second World War.

The early 1950s saw a sharp fall-off in the Co-Operative’s export earnings. Rising Australian prices for sugar and tin, and a resultant drop in production, were largely responsible for the fall.

Employment within the company also fell during the 1950s, including in Adelaide, as a result of technological changes, among them the introduction of automatic peeling machines. But with a new record profit of £746,860 in 1953-54, sales of more than £15 million and paid-up capital of £2.115 million the Co-Operative nonetheless still dominated the Australian jam and canned fruit industry.

By this time the company had extended its financial interests to include cold stores, stevedoring, flour milling, insurance and broadcasting; it controlled more than 30 subsidiary companies.

In the face of new brands and intense competition, the Australian arm of the business, in particular, began to struggle, losing more than £100,000 in profit in the 7 years to October 1961. The company was increasingly perceived in corporate circles as being old-fashioned and reluctant to adjust to new circumstances.

In December 1972 the company was taken over by the Australian-owned Food Canning Industries Pty Ltd. The new owners strove to make the company more efficient, selling off underperforming assets, including a $10.9 million disposal of its South African interests, and rationalising its Australian operations.

The company almost immediately cut the number of local factories from 11 to 4. Among those culled was the Mile End South plant, which closed early in 1973. The site was sold to United Motors Limited in May 1973 for $350,000. (The main Melbourne factory in South Yarra closed in October 1973 and the Hobart factory in 1979).

For several years the Mile End South site housed Freeman Motors. 

The site has been owned by the State Government since July 1985 and is now home to Torrens Transit, a private bus company which operates as part of the Adelaide Metro public transport network.

Parts of the exterior of the Henry Jones factory remained in place until the early 1990s; the factory’s iconic chimney, one of the last remnants of the plant, was demolished in April 1991. 

After a long series of corporate manoeuvres, in May 2004 – when it was still Australia’s leading manufacturer of fruit spreads ahead of the Cadbury Schweppes, Monbulk and Cottee’s labels – Henry Jones IXL was bought by SPC Ardmona for $51 million. In October 2019, SPC Ardmona sold the IXL brand, and its factory in Kyabram, Victoria, to a group of Goulburn Valley farmers and growers who were majority funded by Malaysian interests.

As of 2021, IXL remains the second largest selling jam brand in Australia.

More information: https://www.henryjonesfoods.com.au/about-us/

West Torrens Historical Society Inc. (G. Grainger, 2021)

Every effort has been made to provide complete and accurate information, please advise of any errors or omissions.