COOL STORAGE SPACE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 16, 20 January 1926, Page 9

COOL STORAGE SPACE.

I GREAT GROWTH IN AUCKLAND. 1 I EXPANSION OF THE INDUSTRY. ! As much frozen produce now goes through Auckland in a week as was handled in twelve months a couple of years ago. and every year sees a marvellous expansion of the industry. Owing to its position. Auckland must always be the shipping port for manysquare miles of territory, and provision has to be made for storing the produce between the time it is landed in Auckland, either by rail or by steamer, and the time that it is shipped on board = Home liner. Every handling means a rise in temperature, which is specially bad for butter, and it also means added expense. Owing to the rapid increase ', in the dairying industry the storage! room available in Auckland during the flush of the season was not sufficient to hold-ail the butter and cheese that was coming forward. Some of it had to be sent out to Southdown, and some as far away as Horotiu in the Waikato. To remove this handicap large extensions were made last winter to the Farmers' Freezing Company's storaze space. King* wharf. Auckland, and this is now being made ""live"" by the installation of one of the biggest Haslam freezing plants in the Dominion. The engines are interesting to engineering' people as they are of the drop-valve type. the. difference to a layman being very much like thai between the valve operations of an internal combustion engine, and the complicated slide valves of the ordinary steam engine. It is ' what i* known as a cross-compound surface condensing engine, the hic-h pressure cylinder having a diameter of 21 J inches and the low" pressure of 42 inches, by 36 inch stroke, driving two 18 inch compressors. It is the largest idrop-valve plant in these parts, and some idea of its huge sire may be gathered from the fact that the" l.p. cylinder- weighs 64 tons, tbe crank shaft ; 5 tons, while the imm;c=j fiv-wheel, 16 feet in diameter, weighs 14 tons. The engine develops 2.30 h.p.. winch to an -outsider seems an enormous amount o: energy needed to drive two compressers r which measure only IS inches by 3-J j inches, and that shows the enormous ; amount of energy which is transmuted into the low temperature upon which this prosperous Dominion may be said to exist.