International Beef Packing in the Age of Empire: LEMCO in South West Africa, 1906–c.1940

ABSTRACT From 1906, the Liebig’s Extract of Meat Company (LEMCO), parent of the Oxo and Fray Bentos brands, entered colonial Namibia as an export-oriented ranching and beef-processing enterprise, purchasing pastureland recently emptied by the Nama-Herero war, with the goal of replicating its successful South American operations in Africa. While LEMCO hoped to expand its markets in Germany and South Africa, the German colonial government anticipated that LEMCO would improve cattle and landscapes in South West Africa and offer German settlers an industrial outlet for their cattle. Unlike the major global beef suppliers, LEMCO relied on arid environments, using natural pastures and low-grade cattle, making Namibia supposedly ideal for its production. Yet ecological and human factors specific to South West Africa, including recurrent severe drought, sparse human populations, and international and transborder disease controls challenged these ambitions. While LEMCO’s multinational scope enabled it to navigate Anglo-German rivalries during the First World War, South African regional imperialism leading up to the Second World War, coupled with severe droughts during the interwar period, expedited the company’s exit from South West Africa in 1940. Its model of beef packing continued into the apartheid and post-independence periods.