Meadow Lea

Meadow Lea is one of Australia's leading brands of polyunsaturated margarine spreads, founded in Sydney by 1932 and owned since 1986 by the Australasian food company Goodman Fielder.

The Meadow Lea brand was founded by Oliver Triggs in 1932, in Enmore, Sydney, but had its origins about four years earlier in Richmond, Melbourne, where Triggs owned a small grocery store. In about 1934 Triggs hired James (Jim) Armstrong as a sales manager, on commission, for country regions in New South Wales. In 1941 Triggs and Armstrong reached an agreement whereby Armstrong would sell his roughly 25% sales commission share in the Meadow Lea Margarine Company to Triggs' son Kenneth (Ken) when he turned 21 in 1945.

Accordingly, Armstrong sold his commission interests in Meadow Lea to Ken Triggs in 1945, and retired from the company. In about 1956, Oliver and Ken Triggs sold the Meadow Lea Margarine Company to Vegetable Oils Pty Ltd, a subsidiary of the publicly listed company Allied Mills Ltd.

On 30 April 1986 Allied Mills was taken over by Fielder Gillespie Davis Limited, part of the Goodman Group Ltd (New Zealand), to create Goodman Fielder Ltd. In 1987 Goodman Fielder purchased Wattie Industries Ltd (New Zealand), becoming Goodman Fielder Wattie Ltd, only to divest Wattie Foods to H. J. Heinz Company in 1992 and return to being called Goodman Fielder Ltd. In 2003 Goodman Fielder was acquired by Burns, Philp & Company Limited, being relisted again in 2005.

In 2010 the MeadowLea product range consisted of six varieties:

Oliver Francis Triggs (1895–1962) founded the Meadow Lea table margarine brand by 1932 and was the first person in Australia to manufacture table margarine, finally selling Meadow Lea to Allied Mills in about 1956. Triggs was born in Melbourne on a small farm, fought with the Light Horse in World War I, then trained as a tailor, before opening a corner grocery shop and making copha butter. After copha butter was banned in Victoria to support the butter industry and pure butter sales, Triggs moved to Sydney in about 1931. He was married to Nita Alice Bek (1895–1974) and had four children, Kenneth, Audray and Marian (twins), and Jill.

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