Fund for export heritage

The historic Clark's Mill is in need of a makeover. Photo / Oamaru Mail

The farm buildings where New Zealand's billion-dollar meat exporting industry began need an urgent and costly makeover.

The Historic Places Trust has launched a campaign to save the Totara Estate, including a 130-year-old slaughterhouse and the nearby Clark's Mill south of Oamaru, saying both properties now needed about $400,000 spent to stop their deterioration of the buildings.

The slaughterhouse, built in 1881 at Totara Estate, was where the first sheep meat to be exported to Britain from New Zealand was killed and processed.