Obituaries Australia

The death occurred in London on 5th May of the second Lord Vestey, joint principal of the world-wide Vestey meat, shipping, and allied interests and a well known figure throughout the meat export trade. He was 71 years of age.

Lord Vestey was a son of the late Lord William Vestey and a nephew of Sir Edmund Vestey, Bt., who some 50 years ago together founded the Union Cold Storage and Ice Company of Liverpool Ltd. The firm prospered and expanded, spreading its operations throughout the meat exporting countries until to-day the Vestey group, known as Union International Company, the Blue Star Shipping Line, and Albion Insurance Company, is one of the biggest of its kind in the world. It has made trading profits of £5½ million sterling since the second World War.

Until his death in November last year Sir Edmund Vestey was chairman of the family interests, but since then Lord Vestey had been the principal director of Union International and a director of the Blue Star Line and the Albion Insurance Company. He had been ill only about a week, and before that had gone to his London office at Smithfield meat market for an eight-hour working day. However, when he was in Australia early in 1952 on one of his periodical visits he became seriously ill and spent some time in hospital.

Lord Vestey leaves a widow and two daughters, his only son, Captain the Hon. William Howarth Vestey, having been killed in action in Italy in 1944. The late Captain Vestey married in 1939 Miss Pamela Armstrong, of Victoria, a granddaughter of the late Dame Nellie Melba, and their elder son, Samuel George Armstrong Vestey, now aged 13, is the new peer.