Brewery Products Limited - some pic's and brief history

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Raypadua

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Hi there,

I picked up a beer bottle the other day which had "This Bottle Belonging to Brewery Products Limited May Not Be Sold" embossed near the bottom of the bottle and also had a BP Ltd and a diamond D embossed on its base. I could not find anything regarding Brewery Products Limited when I did a Google Search. But thanks to the help of David Whitten from Glass Bottle marks website he helped me find the following information:

Brewery_Products__1936__Photo_by_LB_FooteBillWriteDaveCraig_1046x388.jpg

Brewery Products Limited was located on James Ave. just behind the Concert Hall and the building looks today much as it did 70 years ago. The company was started in 1936. It distributed beer for Shea's, Kiewels, Drewry's and Pelissiers Breweries and also for other beers from outside the province. All the men in the photo are Brewery Products employees, many of them originally from those breweries. The trucks are also property of the company but have the brewery names on them to promote each brewery. Brewery Products continued on until the end of 1960 when delivery reverted back to the breweries. Around this time most of the local breweries had been bought out by the big nationals. Labatts bought Shea's, Kiewels and Pelissiers Breweries in the 1950's as mentioned above, Carling bought Drewry's and Molson took Fort Garry. Fort Garry was never part of the BP arrangement and apparently Molson also wanted to go it alone. All the employees were split up between the 3 companies. In 1976 they tried it again with Associated Beer Distributors. This time each brewery owned a part of the business. It later became Brewers Distributors LTD when all the beer distributors in each western province amalgamated.


Here are a couple of pic's from the bottle:

Brewery Prodcuts Ltd - BP embossed Base.jpgBrewery Products Limited Bottle - bottom.jpg

I hope this is useful news for some :)

Regards,
Ray
 

CanadianBottles

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Never seen that one before. Funny that even with such minimal embossing they still managed to cram in a long-winded "Not To Be Sold" message. I don't know why but Winnipeg bottlers used the most amazingly long anti-theft messages.
 

Raypadua

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Two lines of text circling the base is quite amazing and unusual. I guess it is better than having 4 or 5 lines of vertical lines of text that I have seen on lots of Drewry and Blackwood bottles (and countless others). The former allows room for labels which I am sure was the purpose since Brewery Products Ltd distributed beer for Shea's, Kiewels, Drewry's and Pelissiers Breweries.

I have discovered that Winnipeg and Manitoba in general is a hot bed of bottling companies during the late 19th and early 20th centuries! Lots of history to uncover :)
 

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