SUNICRUST Bakeries operated the Wodonga bakery for most of the 35 years it has been in existence.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Ten years ago the bakery employed about 100 staff, but numbers have since halved.
Its slogan was: “Buy local bread to keep local jobs.”
Sunicrust was a Bunge Australia company.
Bunge sold Sunicrust to Goodman Fielder in 1998 but later it became part of Burns Philp and was restored to ownership of a restructured Goodman Fielder in 2005 and the name Sunicrust dropped.
The bakery’s roots in Wodonga can be traced to Hall’s Bakery, established in 1930.
In 1960, Bob Hall and four Albury bakers, Eric Wynne and Allan, Neville and Keith Thiel, joined Bunge’s Albury Flour Mills in forming a new company, Southern Border Bakeries.
Their three bakeries operated separately for some years, but in 1972 the operations were consolidated when Southern Border Bakeries built the present bakery in Wodonga.
It was producing 200,000 loaves a week 10 years ago.
Albury resident Eric Cossor, who worked for the bakeries for 45 years, said yesterday the closure didn’t surprise him as it continued a trend.
“People complained when Sunicrust closed the Deniliquin, Wangaratta and Myrtleford bakeries and centralised operations in Wodonga,’’ he said.
“Closing Wodonga and bringing the bread from Melbourne will make the product older.”
