Weet-Bix

Weet-Bix is a high-fibre and low-sugar breakfast cereal biscuit manufactured in Australia and New Zealand by the Sanitarium Health and Wellbeing Company, and in South Africa by Bokomo.

Weet-Bix, the breakfast cereal, was developed by Bennison Osborne in Perth, Australia in the mid-1920s. Osborne set out to make a product more palatable than "Granose," a biscuit that was marketed by the Sanitarium Health Food Company at that time. On 19 August 1926, he lodged an application for registration of the trademark Weetbix, a name which he had devised.

Production began at 659 Parramatta Road, Leichhardt, under the management of Osborne and with the financial backing of Arthur Shannon who created the company "Grain Products" to manufacture the cereal. Osborne's friend Malcolm Ian Macfarlane from New Zealand joined him to take on a marketing role. The product was so successful that in October 1928, Shannon sold the rights in the product to the Australasian Conference Association Limited (Sanitarium Health Food Company, a wholly owned subsidiary and venture of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Australia). Macfarlane suggested that they ship the product to New Zealand, where it proved so successful that it became difficult to adequately supply the market from Australia. Osborne and MacFarlane went to N.Z. and factories were established in Auckland and Christchurch. However, once again, Shannon sold out to the Australasian Conference Association Limited.

Osborne and Macfarlane then exported the product to South Africa and with Shannon's financial backing, went to that country and a factory was built in Cape Town, with Osborne managing sales. This enterprise was also subsequently sold, this time to Bokomo.

While in South Africa, Osborne and Macfarlane sought to obtain more satisfactory financial backing to secure Osborne's product. A group was formed, Osborne refined the product and he and Macfarlane went to England to form the British & African Cereal Company, Ltd., which they registered in London in 1932, as a Private Company, with the proprietor shown as Weetabix Limited of Weetabix Mills, Burton Latimer, Kettering. All shares in the Company were specified to be under the control of the Directors, the first of whom were Bennison Osborne, Malcolm Ian Macfarlane, Alfred Richard Upton and Arthur Stanley Scrutton. For the purpose of differentiating the product from that sold in Australia, N.Z. and South Africa, the product was named "Weetabix".

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