Buenos Aires venture led to expansion in Uruguay and Brazil

Douglas Fraser & Sons, from Arbroath, was established in the early 1830s before expanding its business into Argentina, where the invention that made the Fraser fortune was unveiled.

The firm was looking for ways to diversify and identified an opportunity for mechanising the production of jute-soled shoes called alpargatas using this technology.

The factory, built as a result in 1885, still stands just a couple of blocks from the Boca Juniors football ground in Buenos Aires and displays an Arbroath heraldic plaque.

After initial struggles, the business in Argentina took off and spawned sister companies in Uruguay and Brazil and became a vast enterprise.

A significant number of Arbroathians went to South America to work for these companies.

In 1959 Douglas Fraser & Sons was taken over by Giddings & Lewis from Wisconsin, but a world slump around 1970 hit machine tools particularly hard and the business is no more.

Following the winding up of the company the factory bell, which had summoned the workforce to its Wellgate Works in Arbroath, was hung above the entrance to the original Buenos Aires factory in a special ceremony.

It is now prominently displayed in the foyer of a luxury apartment block in Buenos Aires.

It remains there as testament to the country’s link with Arbroath.

There are 100,000 people of Scottish descent in Argentina but the role the Scots played in the rapid growth of the country’s economy is less well known than that of countries from the former British Empire.