CARRERAS’ FACTORY

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 December 1928, Page 11

CARRERAS’ FACTORY

SIMPLE OPENING CEREMONY.

Carreras’ new factory, which has been opened by Mr Bernhard Baron the Chairman of the Company, constitutes not only the largest reinforced concrete building under one roof in Great Britain, but also that rare thing—the realisation of a man’s dream. Mr Baron is a practical idealist. He set out to make cigarettes. . Consequently he sought perfection in cigarettes. He wanted them made in the best way, and in the best conditions. He wanted the people who made them to be happy in their work. It has all come true. The opening ceremony was as impressive in its simplicity as the new building is in its efficiency and design. Mr Baron performed it himself, not so much as Chairman of the Company as the father of the three thousand employees who have helped him to achieve success. He said, at the luncheon, that he felt it a great honour to have opened the factory, and that he wanted his employees about him at that moment to share his pleasure. That was why he decided on a simple ceremony, a family celebration, as it were, of the culmination of one stage of his life’s work. He presented each of his employees, in memory of the event with a silver medal, inscribed, “My thanks for all

your help.” Carreras’ new building embodies all that is best in factory design. It is well lit, as well ventilated and as healthy as it is possible to make 17. Most important of all, it has been fitted with an air conditioning plant which is only one of its kind in the British tobacco industry, and which ensures a consistently ideal atmosphere for the manufacture of the perfect cigarette. The air which enters the building is first washed clean with water. It is then adjusted to the required temperature and humidity. Outside, London may be shivering or sweltering, damp or dusty. Inside, every day is a fine day; all weather is fair weather. It is well known that the English climate is the best in the world for the manufacture of tobacco; it can now be said that Carreras’ climate is the best in England. The dust extractors are another example of the thoroughness of this scheme which has created tho hygienically perfect production of cigarettes. One forms part of every cigarette making machine, and, working on the vacuum principle, sucks up the last particle of dust and foreign matter from the tobacco.- The best tobacco—and nothing else —then passes on to form, with the best paper, the best procurable cigarettes. The main features of the factory as a whole are spaciousness and light. The windows reach from floor to ceiling. There are nine acres of floor space. All overhead shafting has been eliminated, and every machine has its own motor. The conception and construction of the factory are entirely British. Three thousand tons of British steel are included in ts structure; nearly four hundred thousand square feet of Canadian maple are in its floors. The window frames are of British bronze, and every cog in its machines —from the ventilating plant in the roof down to the transformers of electric current in the base-

ment —'has been made in Great Britain. The facade of the building, which stretches five hundred and fifty feet along Hampstead Road, is something fresh in London architecture —a conventionalised copy of the Temple of Bubastis, the cat-headed goddess of Ancient Egypt. Two great bronze cats of Bubastis, ten feet high, flank the main entrance. Behind them rise twelve tall pillars against the face, of the building. The colours with which they are decorated were ground from glass, and cannot be dimmed. Over all is set the winged solar disc, emblem of Ra the Sun God, the mellower of tobacco. Here, indeed is the Temple of the Cigarette—a vast building, perfectly fitted for its purpose, and a centre of industry worthy of the capital of the British Empire. It is a. new London landmark —the largest factory in the Metropolis.—A.D.