17 Apr 2026
Nothing says kiwi summer like an ice cream at the beach. But it took a lot of engineering ingenuity and imagination to commercially produce the treat we so easily enjoy today.
In colonial New Zealand, cream and sugar were easy enough to come by, but the more challenging ingredient needed for making ice cream was ice. Luckily for ice cream-loving early settlers, by the 1850s ice was an established commercial product. It was harvested from large lakes in the United States and shipped around the world, including to New Zealand. Through the 1850s and 1860s it was not uncommon to see advertisements in the local newspapers announcing the arrival of a shipment of ice – and shortly after, ads from hotels proclaiming ice creams for sale.
Ice cream churns were available in New Zealand from the late 1840s. These were metal cylinders, one inside the other. Ice was packed in the outer cylinder, with salt added to bring the temperature down to -5 degrees Celsius. This was then cold enough to freeze the cream in the inner cylinder. Hand cranked paddles scraped the frozen cream from the sides of the container and provided aeration at the same time.
The 1870s saw the advent of mechanical refrigeration and in 1881, the country’s first commercial meat freezing company was established in Dunedin. Locally made ice was now readily and cheaply available.
Young boy and girl eating ice creams, December 1947. Photo. Whites Aviation Ltd. Ref WA-10156-G, Alexander Turnbull Library.
Food safety and quality standards
With numerous small producers making ice cream, quality standards were variable. In 1915 the Health Department brought in regulations stipulating that to be advertised and sold as ice cream the product must contain at least
10 percent milk fat. Food inspectors fined shopkeepers whose ice cream failed to meet this standard. Food safety was another concern. In January 1913 more than 200 cases of food poisoning were reported in Whanganui, with most traced back to a popular ice cream shop. It was concluded that the cream supplied to the shop had carried bacteria. Pasteurisation of cream by heating it to kill bacteria was introduced and became common practice, but required a more sophisticated factory set up.
In 1924 the Robinson Ice Cream Company Ltd was leading the way with its state-of-the-art machinery. A reporter from the Auckland Star visited the factory and described in rapt detail the process of pasteurisation and homogenisation. The cream was heated to 145 degrees Fahrenheit (62.7 degrees Celsius) and maintained at this temperature for half an hour before being forced, at a pressure of 2000lb per square inch, through small holes in the homogeniser – breaking the globules of fat to “give the smoothness which is desired by all ice cream manufacturers and appreciated by the public generally”.
The rise of Tip Top
With refrigeration and food safety sorted, competition in the ice cream industry turned to product design and market share. Tip Top opened its first milk bar in 1935 in Wellington’s Manners Street. It was the first dedicated milk bar selling only ice cream and milkshakes. By 1937 there were six Tip Top milk bars in Wellington. In 1936 Tip Top opened a factory on Waterloo Quay and invested in the latest equipment, including a votator. This scraped surface freezer was the first of its kind in New Zealand and enabled Tip Top to run a continuous, rather than batch, freezing process.
With market leading machinery and economies of scale, Tip Top was able to buy out smaller players and produce more sophisticated and novel products. In 1951, the company launched the Jelly Tip – vanilla ice cream on a stick with raspberry jelly at the top, coated in chocolate – which is still available today. In 1953 Tip Top merged with Robinson Ice Cream Company Ltd, effectively absorbing one of their largest competitors. In 1962 Tip Top opened its Auckland factory overlooking the Southern Motorway. With the latest facilities and equipment, the company’s research and development team was able to dream up even more sophisticated creations with chocolate, nuts and injected ripples of fruity flavours. In 1964 they launched the still popular Trumpet. From dream to reality, nothing could be sweeter.
Cindy Jemmett is Heritage Advisor at Te Ao Rangahau.
This article was first published in the March 2026 issue of EG magazine.
