In 1901 CSR closed its distillery in Fiji and replaced it with a much larger facility in Pyrmont. Rum was one of the distillery¹s products, and rum had to be stored in barrels. The Cooperage was therefore built for CSR as a specialist workshop to manufacture and repair these barrels. The building survives and much of the machinery is displayed in it.
Until the 1980s Bowman Street was much narrower than today, so the barrels were conveyed on steel tracks on a bridge across the road to the distillery.