Weet-Bix is a whole-grain wheat breakfast cereal created and manufactured in Australia and New Zealand by the Sanitarium Health Food Company, and in South Africa by Bokomo.
History
Weet-Bix was developed by Bennison Osborne in Sydney, Australia, in the mid-1910s. Osborne set out to make a product more palatable than Granose, a biscuit that was marketed by the Sanitarium Health Food Company at that time. On 19 August 1926, he lodged an application for registration of the trademark Weet-Bix, a name which he had devised.
Production began at 659 Parramatta Road, Leichhardt,[1] under the management of Osborne, and with the financial backing of Arthur Shannon, who created the company Grain Products to manufacture the cereal. Osborne's friend, Malcolm Ian Macfarlane, from New Zealand, joined him to take on a marketing role. The product was so successful that, in October 1928, Shannon sold the rights in the product to the Australasian Conference Association Limited (Sanitarium Health Food Company, a wholly owned subsidiary and venture of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Australia).
Macfarlane suggested that they ship the product to New Zealand, where it proved so successful that it became difficult to adequately supply the market from Australia. Osborne and MacFarlane went to New Zealand and established factories in Auckland and Christchurch. However, once again, Shannon sold out to the Australasian Conference Association Limited.