The processing of farm products was important from the beginning, and the preparation of meat and dairy products both for the home and for overseas markets led to the early establishment of meat works and butter and cheese factories throughout the country. The export of preserved meat and of dairy products was limited until 1882, when refrigeration rapidly expanded the exports of these products.

Flourmills were operating early in the 1840s. The manufacture of other products soon followed–fancy biscuits, jams, confectionery, pickles and sauces, beer, cordials. Sugar, their principal ingredient, was at first imported mainly from Java, but after the establishment of a sugar refinery at Auckland in the early eighties, it was produced there from sugar cane grown in Fiji. By 1885 almost all the fancy biscuits, about half the confectionery, more than half of the jams and cordials, and a large proportion of the beer consumed were being supplied by local manufacture.