Scottish bricks found in Liebig, Argentina

Scottish bricks found by Adriana Ortea at a disused meat factory in Liebig, Argentina.

The bricks included

Nettle

Stein Glasgow

Thistle

Gartcraig

Caledonia

Starworks Glenboig

In 1865, Liebig’s Extract of Meat Company was founded in Britain by German chemist Justus von Liebig. The company established a factory in Uruguay to manufacture a beef extract product that would later be sold under the name Oxo. In 1873, the factory began manufacturing tinned corned beef, which was sold in Britain under the name Fray Bentos, the town in Uruguay where the factory was located.

Fray Bentos was trademarked by Liebig in 1881 for the purpose of marketing glue and “extract of meat”, although, in practice, it was used principally for marketing corned beef. In fact, Fray Bentos became synonymous with corned beef

Fray Bentos corned beef was targeted at a working-class market. The tins were also ideally suited as army rations as they weighed just one pound and were easily transportable. With the outbreak of the Boer War, the company’s profits were significantly boosted from supplying corned beef to the British Army in South Africa. Fray Bentos corned beef was also supplied to the troops in World War I. Its popularity was such that the term “Fray Bentos” was used as slang by soldiers to mean “good”. One of the early British tanks that fought at the Battle of Passchendaele was given the nickname “Fray Bentos” because the men inside felt like tinned meat

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