Bold abattoirs venture at Gepps Cross ends in 1999 after losing meat monopoly for Adelaide metro area and export

A 1980s view looking south of the Gepps Cross abattoirs complex in Adelaide's north. The new Southern Works complex, replacing the original 1913 works, is shows at top, with its beef chain below right. At right: Richard Maurovic's book The Meat Game, telling the Gepps Cross abattoirs story.
Images courtesy South Australian government's primary industries and resources department; and Frank Rocca

Gepps Cross abattoirs, a bold public enterprise from 1913 to supply meat hygienically to the whole Adelaide metropolitan area, finally closed in 1999 after its contested monopoly status in Adelaide and for all exports had been eroded.

Built at a cost of £350,000 on more than 600 acres, the abattoirs was started to under the control of a local government authority, the Metropolitan Abattoirs Board, representing Adelaide municipal councils. The Gepps Cross abattoirs soon sparked a South Australian government royal commission looking at complaints about high prices of livestock and slaughtering costs charged, the flow on prices to retailers, and closure of butcher shops after the abattoirs opened.

Meanwhile, Abattoirs (later Pooraka) school was opened in 1914 for the abattoirs employees' children. The downside for the area was in  Dry Creek west of the abattoirs where noxious processes, notably the boiling down works and fertiliser plants, were started.

Another early royal commission looked at any restraint on trade or monopoly linked to the export of meat from Australia and the effect of United States of America firms coming into the Australian market. Up until the 1930s, meat for export from South Australia had been processed by a government plant at Port Adelaide. In 1933, a state inquiry recommended that control of all slaughtering and freezing of livestock for export and local consumption be taken over by Gepps Cross abattoirs under the Metropolitan Abattoirs Board renamed the Metropolitan and Export Abattoirs Board.

Gepps Cross replaced the Port Adelaide operations and Glenelg (on the later golf course) and Marion abattoirs, allied by some local butchers who resisted joining the Gepps Cross monopoly. All livestock for Adelaide local and export were now treated at Gepps Cross, where cold stores were built for freezing lambs for export and moving conveyor chains installed for slaughtering sheep.

In 1955, a court case to test the validity of the Metropolitan and Export Abattoirs Board Act went to the-then highest appeals court: the privy council in London. This promoted a South Australian law change to allow regional export abattoirs access to the Adelaide market. That opened the way for processing works on Adelaide’s periphery, including Noarlunga, Lobethal, Murray Bridge and Naracoorte, to expand.

Responding to a challenge to Gepps Cross profits, in 1972, the Metropolitan and Export Abattoirs Board became the South Australian Meat Corporation (SAMCOR), a state government agency. SAMCOR, taking over Port Lincoln abattoirs in 1977, had different powers from the original board and was more commercial. A new abattoirs complex, The Southern Works, one of Australia’s most modern, was completed in 1975 at Gepps Cross. The old 1913 works dating from 1913 was phased out.

In 1981, the Meat Hygiene Act came into force allowing local and interstate local abattoirs, meeting certain hygiene standards, to sell meat throughout Australia. In 1985, SAMCOR sold all land associated with the stock markets at Pooraka. The Gepps Cross abattoirs remained the main slaughtering plant for meat processors (including wholesalers and exporters) on a service kill basis in South Australia but, in 1995, the state government advertised its operations and assets (land, buildings, plant, equipment, inventories) for sale or lease. The complex continued to be unprofitable with stock slaughtering numbers well below capacity and abattoirs competing against overseas producers and rising export costs. The land incorporated in the Gepps Cross abattoirs site shrunk to only about 49 ha or 132.5 acres – about a sixth of the original land area.

Gepps Cross abattoirs was sold in 1997 and finally closed in 1999.