Homburg Conserven
THE ABANDONED FACTORY IN THE NETHERLANDS
The history of the ‘Homburg Conserven’ company goes back to 1905, when Jonges Homburg started its butcher’s shop in Zaandam. The Cuijk factory was built in 1949.
Jonges Homburg moved his business to Haarlem in 1920. In 1930, he started with the manufacture of sausage for local grocers and similar middle-class stores. They grew until there were about 30 employees. Further growth followed from in 1949, and eventually 60 people worked for Homburg Conserven.
Homburg moved its meat processing plant in November 1949 from Haarlem to this location in Cuijk. The company grew rapidly, and in 1951 the production area was already expanded to 7000 m2 and 700 people were employed in 1962. The new factory was specially set up as a slaughterhouse for pigs. The products produced were mainly sausages and canned meat. The glory days of the factory were in the late 1960s, the slaughter capacity was around 20,000 pigs a week.
J. Lyons & Co.
In 1972 Homburg was taken over by the British company ‘J. Lyons & Co.’ A manufacturer of bakery and ice cream products. After the merge, business started to go downhill for Homburg. There had already been company fires in 1969 and 1971, but the swine fever epidemic of 1974 was a major setback. In 1988 Homburg Conserven was forced to close the slaughterhouse. The factory started to focus on semifinished products and later on vegetarian products, after a merge with the ‘Boekos Food Group’. The factory was closed in 2003, the last 9 people of the once 2,000 employees closed the door for good. I took these photos of ‘Homburg Conserven’ in 2005.
