MARGARINE DE LUXE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 106, 5 May 1923, Page 12

MARGARINE DE LUXE.

FACTORY AND ITS WELFARE SCHEME. >\Z. BUTTER CONSUMER. (By Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, March 12. It was a discovery to me—and I find tliere are lots of people like me —to find that the manufacture of margarine connotes v consumption not only of fresh milk, but of butter.

The regulations as to the sale of margarine are strict. You may mix only certain proportions of matters, other than tli ( . animal or vegetable fat which constitutes its hulk, and the best margarine contains 10 per cent of butter, and often that of New Zealand's best.

Fresh from a visit to an Essex margarine factory, Messrs .lurgens at Purllect, I am impressed by the scientific cleanliness, the care and thoroughness •>f organisation which go to make an up-to-date margarine factory. Apart from the fact that M. Anion Jurgcna, the Dutch founder of the companies which now operate in a number of Kuro-

pean countries, was a pioneer, second only to that M. Mege-Mouries. who indented mai-garim- in response to the demands of the French Knipcrur at the time of the Franco-Prussian war when lie was in need of a buUer substitute for his troops. lhi< Ksaox factory is noteworthy us being the hist word in scientific production by :i family which has always led in this important line of U-o<l production.

The Knglish .hirgen company owiia nearly 200 acres of tins low-lying lately reclaimed piece of Thames-side. The actual Imildiiig-i occupy tin area >>f 2li aero.". Apnrt from the refining of the oils and the criiHhing of copra, the I'lirllret fueturv is self-contained.

We saw milk arrive l.y train right into the factory, when , it is unloaded direct into the pasteurising rooms, and this supply awra-jes about 4000 gallons per day. Ii i< th"n i-'urned in with the different fals. oil and vegetable, and veritable butter, in power-driven churns. from that it is passed over rollers which smenr a thin surface of the mixture on a largp drum, on the surface of which it ii cooled and scraped off; the machine by which this process is carried out is one of the newest refinements in the process. I'.y ii time and labour are saved. This mixture is margarine. It is first put into tanks, in which it lies for ii certain time this period is one determined by the bio-chemist—to mature. It is then put through a number of machines in which it is again to some extent churned or kneaded by being put thmuch long cylinders with s'erl worms, the constant movement of which changes the margarine from a broken flake-like consistency—much like that of butter when the housewife has

"worked" it, into a basin of flour—into a solid homogeneous mass—-the margarine of commerce. The resources of science are brought in just as much in the handling of margarine after its manufacture as before. The margarine when ready for put tins up is put into a last churn, which holds about "itilhs. This is arranged so as to be emptied into a grease paper-lined box which, by one movement, a girl elides on to an automatic weighing machine and by means of which she regulates the weight of the contents. The next girl smooths the surface, puts the paper in place ;in-l moves the box on Us moving roller conveyor under a machine which with one action nails on the lid of the case.

I'Yom this point on in the factory the whole journey of a mass of margarine is a series of movements over "conveyors." The big wooden case is conveyed on a moving platform to the storo; from the store by another on to the railway wagon at the store door.

The round and square pats of margarine are automatically made, weighed, and put up by machinery, tended by girls in white overalls.

One attractive conveyor is that in the boxmakiiig building. It is like a big flat scuttle, hung about breast height from a chain. Myriads of scuttles are hung at intervals of ;i few feet from this endless chain, which is in constant easy movement parallel to the floor. The workers in the long building simply dump boxes on these scuttles at one end of the long room* Another worker perhaps halfway along or at, the other end expecting t his consignment on the moving scuttle takes the boxes ofT. It is a fascinating device that 1 would like to see introduced into the labour-saving fixtures at home!

For the rest therp ;irc jill the appurtenances of a big power-driven factory, dynamos. steam turbine driven, and one ouplit to mention the liipgest conveyor of all, th:it which brings coal up from the river-side in an automatic moving platform which brings the real up and dumps it in a heap, from which again other conveyors carry the coal to the fiirnnces.

The management has devoted serious attention to the problem of casual labour, and has devised a scheme the basis of which is that they have now in permanent employment ii number in excess of their old permanent stulT when they used to draw freely on casual labour. This permanent, stall' is guaranteed a wage of at lc.ist f>o per cent, of the standard wage, and it is the manageearn as near the full wage us possible, in order that their overljenrl expenditure may be barked up by full employment of 'the stall.

The management, too, make it. their 'business to see to their sick employees, and pay for hospital treatment and such other attentions as may bring the employees to full physienl fitness. While present circumstances preclude their taking up housing schemes, the manaClement have taken pains to hack up their employees in their claims for proper treatment as house tenants, n very welcome help to workmen in these days.