Glaxo
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Glaxo – the multinational company that began at Bunnythorpe
When Wellington merchant Joseph Nathan opened a branch store in Palmerston North in 1877, major investment in the marketing of dairy products was probably not a consideration for this successful businessman.
Dairy farming was not a stand- alone option at that time. Most farmers would keep a few dairy cows to supply the needs of their own family and would sell or barter any extra butter they produced at the local store - 4pence a pound was the standard price - and the skim milk would be used to raise pigs for bacon.
Suddenly, in 1882, the beginning of refrigerated transport transformed opportunities for dairy produce. Butter could be sold as far afield as the other side of the world.
From 1883 the first butter and cheese factories began to dot the landscape of Manawatu and Joseph Nathan and Sons quickly realized the potential for the export of dairy products and became one of the players in the butter and cheese manufacturing business in the district.
In 1903 Nathans purchased the Makino Butter Factory near Feilding from William Wescombe Corpe. (To read more about William Wescombe Corpe’s life visit www.dnzb.govt.nz )
Nathans became interested in the processing of dried milk and obtained the patent for this product in Australia and New Zealand. In May, 1904 John Merrett, an English engineer employed by Nathans, produced the first dried milk ever processed in New Zealand at the Makino factory. 
By the end of that year Nathan and Sons had a new pupose-built dried milk processing factory operating at Bunnythorpe. Dried milk was produced at this site for the next 70 years.
The target market for the Nathans’ dried milk was the growing cities of England, where fresh milk was not always readily available and where hygiene considerations made dried milk a very attractive proposition as an alternative baby food.
After discussion Nathans decided that “Glaxo” would be the name for this new “babyfood”. Success was not immediate, but eventually a huge “Glaxo” industry developed. Marketing was always an important part of the operation and the production of a “Glaxo” baby advice book proved to be a very successful sales gimmick.
During World War I dried milk sales rocketed as the product was adopted as part of the daily diet of the troops in the trenches. The Glaxo business did well and by the end of the war was ready to move onto the next stage of expansion.
The new field of vitamin supplement development and marketing became the next success. A vitamin supplement for the “Glaxo” babyfood was the first step, to be followed by an ever-increasing range of “health products”. In 1937 Glaxo Laboratories was formed and from that time the field of pharmaceuticals became a major part of the business.
It was in 1951 that a big new plant for the manufacture of pharmaceutical products was built in Botanical Road, Palmerston North. The Nathan family had not been associated with the Glaxo business since the late 1930s, but the selection of the Botanical Road site maintained a link with the company’s family beginnings. The land had been one of Joseph Nathan’s many investments in Manawatu during the 1870s and 80s.
At the original Bunnythorpe site manufacture of dried milk and “Farex” continued until 1973, when the whole operation moved into Palmerston North. “Farex”, a cereal product intended as a first solid food for babies, was another of Glaxo’s success stories. For virtually a whole generation of New Zealand children Farex was the first food they smeared over their faces as they were introduced to eating from a spoon.
In the field of pharmaceuticals Glaxo Laboratories was at the cutting edge of work in the development of penicillin and other antibiotics and carried out pioneering work in the production of the first British poliomyelitis vaccine.
Glaxo became the second largest pharmaceutical company in the world and in Palmerston North was a major employer until the closure of the Botanical Road complex on September 16, 1996.
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