Tom Piper doesn’t quite make the list of forgotten Australian brands. There are three products still available in supermarkets, although they may be hard to find: Braised Steak & Onions, Savoury Mince & Vegetables, and Sausages & Vegetables, all in 400 g cans. It’s a far cry from when the brand was at its peak, with a product range including soup, canned meats, baked beans, canned spaghetti, tomato sauce, jam, plum pudding and fruit juice.
The brand had its origins in a bakery in the Melbourne suburb of Gardenvale, run by two brothers, Norman and Archibald Spooner. According to a report in The Age, the brothers were looking for a use for their excess stale bread and decided to make a few plum puddings. The puddings became the first product line of Spooners Canned Products Pty Ltd., founded in 1934, with Norman and Archibald as joint chief executives. Two years later, they launched their Tom Piper brand.
World War II presented an opportunity for manufacturers of canned products. By the end of the 1930s, Tom Piper had moved into canned meats. During the war, they supplied the military while reassuring the public in 1943 that, although they were busy serving the services, “There will be plenty for civilians after the war is won”. When the war ended, meat rationing continued in Australia, and the company presented its canned products as a way to save coupons while nourishing your family.
Tom Piper Limited was incorporated and publicly listed in 1948. The company was focused on expanding its domestic sales beyond the local market and, in the 1949 general meeting, shareholders were informed that Tom Piper products were now available almost everywhere in Australia. Canned meats and puddings were also being exported to the UK, although shortages of tinplate and pressures on meat supplies were presenting challenges. Expanding through the 1950s and 1960s, Tom Piper saw sales climbing to around $17.5 million per year by the early 1970s.
Meanwhile, Archibald Spooner was developing his other interest: boat building. He set up an operation on his large property in the suburb of Scoresby, east of Melbourne. Then, in the 1960s, the Spooners created the artificial Caribbean Lake to test the boats. It became the site of water ski shows and, eventually, the centrepiece of Caribbean Gardens – a market and an amusement park with a chairlift, miniature railway, jungle boat cruises and fibreglass zoo animals. The market and park closed in 2020. It is now a business precinct.
In 1973, the Spooners quit the Tom Piper business for good. The company was sold to Henry Jones (IXL) Limited, leading to a fragmentation of the brand with various product lines being sold off separately. Then, during the 1980s and 1990s, the brand passed through several owners including the meat packers, James Barnes Pty Ltd. and Angliss Pacific/Southern Country Foods (owned by Britain’s Vestey family).
In 1994, an attempt was made to rejuvenate the brand, with research showing that 80 per cent of Australians still recognised the Tom Piper name. The general manager of Southern Country Foods told the Financial Review:
In 1989 the Tom Piper brand was very thin. Its distribution was patchy and its share of the canned-meals market was declining. The brand has been mucked about by foster parents over the years, but we felt we had the base of a good brand.
Two years later, Tom Piper was bought by Heinz and, as a result of a 2015 corporate merger, it is now owned by Kraft Heinz. With a few Tom Piper products still hanging in there as of 2026, it remains to be seen whether the brand has a future.