If you know FRAY BENTOS products... you must then to know  that FRAY BENTOS exists!... Yes. It is a small city in Uruguay ( pop.22.000) near the Argentina border. . It will be a walk full of history and with lots of nature... Because this is what this city on the coast or the Uruguayan river is like, full of panoramics views... Welcome!

Fray Bentos has got a rich work history due to the fact that here, during the 19th and 20th  centuries Liebig`s salt meat factory was established, exploiting the rich agricultural area in the River Plate, with europeans capitals.

 At only 9 km. from Fray Bentos city, the international bridge “Libertador Gral. José de San Martín” (5.300 mt) was constructed, became the main connection between Uruguay and Argentina, through which 30% of the total number of tourist come into Uruguay. A movement of 5.000 lorries per month are registered transporting merchandise between the Mercosur countries. The area is a centre of commercial operations with important perspective for the industrial and commercial development.

Is an important perspective for Fray Bentos in this region of the Uruguayan river, offering various attractive cultural and natural resorts.

Because Fray Bentos is near the “San Martin Bridge”, it has an important perspective of increasing its tourist activity. Buenos Aires, the Argentinien capital (pop.13.000.000) is no farther than 300 km.

Fray Bentos´sea port is the deepest in the northernn part of the Uruguayan River and it can receive deep kell vessels. Almost the total of the wood production of Uruguay is exported through it.

The giant wood production that Uruguay will have in the next few years will be exported mainly through this port. A growing activity is overseen for the future due the important forest activity in the region.

 CONSTITUTION SQUARE. At the center of the town of Fray Bentos, is something of a surprise for an English visitor. In the middle, there is an cast iron pergola, a copy of one exhibited at the Crystal Palace, near London. It was built in England and transported to Uruguay in 1901. This band stand is a reminder of the time when the Liebig factory and the ANGLO frigo was the real commercial and social life of Fray Bentos.

THE LIEBIG`S EXTRACT OF MEAT COMPANY LTD. Fray Bentos was the specific site where the industrial revolution in the Rio de la Plata region, was born. There, began the most important process for the riches of the cattle raising in the 19th and 20th centuries. The first European technology designed for the new industry of the "extractum carnis", came from Glasgow; the technical devices came from Germany. Europeans and American investors helped start the most incredible adventure in Uruguayan economic history.

The revolutionary medicine-food that burnt in the Justus von Liebig`s mind, found in Fray Bentos the precise site to develop and grew immediately. The Liebig`s products were very famous and the recipients with the "Produced in Fray Bentos" mark was everywhere in the world. In fact, the Fray Bentos' name was so famous that was adopted in England as a trade mark, identifying the best quality in meat products. Liebig's meat extract introduced the name of FRAY BENTOS to the world, and, in the imagination of the genial Jules Verne, it served breakfast to their first travellers to the moon.

The old factory didn't stop working for 117 years, first as Liebig's Company and after as Anglo del Uruguay. This activity meant the conservation of edifices, machinery, documents and a very interesting tradition in the meat industrialization of a country which traditionaly produces and exports meat.

The municipal government, had planned a touristic and cultural project to preserve the German and British industrial heritage. But all this work is very important too for the preservation of the Fray Bentos city´history, whose growth was simultaneous with factory life.

The Museum will show for educational purpouses, the machinery used in the meat and extract of meat process, the edifices, an 1893 Merryweather water pumping, a complete canning plant, an invaluable and extremely interesting plant were the meat was cooked, a laboratory full of chemicals and chemestry jars, flasks and stoves and hundred of photos and glass negatives with the Liebi's Company working life...

Fray Bentos's industrial heritage of buildings and machinery is still intact. Dr. Sue Millar from England said: “Thus there is the chance to save time and massive expenditure on conservation, to retain the exceptional scope and variety of the 19th and 20th century British manufacturing and engineering machinery...”

The “Frigorífico ANGLO “ is a tourist attraction and a cultural experience which will be able to satisfy the continuous demand for historical information through the visits of students as part of their studies.

The inheritance can be successfully used to demonstrate the interactivity between the economic history of the country, the industrial revolution, and the production and manufacturing of rich natural resources.

 “Uruguay has the opportunity to develop their industrial history retaining the gamut of industrial machinery engineered from the last century to the present.

Uruguay`s industrial and commercial heritage, with roots in 19th century and early 20th century British manufacturing, provide the combination of informal education at an attactive location with the type of education offered by high schools and universities.

Fray Bentos has, in this sense, the privilge of an extraordinary heritage.”

 YOU CAN SEE MORE about Industrial Revolution Museum of Fray Bentos, in http://www.flickr.com/photos/fraybent...