THE FIRST FACTORY

Taranaki Daily News, 11 September 1934, Page 19 (Supplement)

THE FIRST FACTORY

BUILDING’S LIMITATIONS ESTABLISHED AT WAITARA ROAD. MR. H. M. PURDIE ASSISTANT THERE Mr. H. M. Purdie, chairman of the North Taranaki Co-operative Dairy Company, has vivid recollections of the early days of the first factory at Waitara Road, as he was its first assistant under the first manager, Mr. G. G. Andrews, and has therefore grown up with the dairy industry from its infancy. Little did Mr. Purdie dream when tending to that first separator, what an impetus the introduction of the separator, followed by the re- 1 frigerator, was to give the industry. Though he was associated with the factory from its commencement, while the plant was being installed in fact, Mr. Purdie was not present when the first milk was received. He well remembers how they had to take down the side of the factory in order to get the churn inside, for though considered then something out of the ordinary the factory was quite a crude affair when compared with the factories of to-day. Power was provided by a semi-portable engine, which had been a old threshing machine engine. The separator was a huge affair, a Burmester and Wains, of 160 gallons per hour capacity. Later a second separator was installed. To prevent vibration the machine was set very solidly, being held down by four bolts set in solid concrete. It worked on the principle of centrifugal force, was self-governed, and did quite good work considering there were no means of keping the milk at the proper temperature. It was possible to alter the cream flow while the separator was running, but the bowl of the separator was so heavy that it took three men to remove it, two being required to lift it and one to attend to the spindle. The churn was of the old barrel type with a capacity of from 6 to Bcwt, whilst the worker consisted of double fluted rollers on a sloping round table driven by segment cogs underneath. Making' the butter was a three-day process. The cream would be separated one day and next morning at 3.30, so as to take advantage of the cool of the morning, for there were no refrigerators, the butter would be churned, worked, salted and then left on the table to be re-worked again next morning. It was then patted and pounded. That was a slow process as every pound had to be weighed, squared and wrapped, the staff having to cut their own papers also. There were no boxes, but kegs of either 60 or 1001 b capacity, made of either kauri or tawa were used. The latter were filled with water for a fortnight so as to tighten them. There were two types of kegs viz. the small barrel shape, and others that were wide at the bottom, narrowing to the top. Mr. Bayly used to send quite a lot of butter to Wellington by the mail train which only ran twice a week. Though the train ran close to the factory it was necessary to cart the butter to the Waitara station as the mail train would not stop at Waitara Road. The late Mr. Greville, afterwards of the Dairyman, handled their buttei- at Wellington and butter was also shipped to Australia. Mr. Bayly’s own farms at Kainganui and at Tikorangi were heavy suppliers of milk but they did not take any skim milk back ?s Mr. Bayly kept a large number of pigs on 300 acres of land which he owned near the factory, which had been Jhe .property of the late Sir Harry (then Major) Atkinson. Among the early suppliers were Messrs. Harry, Luxton, C. Hamblyn, of Mangaoraka, F. Salway (Bell Block), W. L Cleave, T. Langman, John Purdie and O. Hoby. Though suppliers were paid by the gallon and there was no tester Mr. Purdie said that the suppliers were generally honest regarding the quality of the milk they brought to the factory, but when it came to the quantity of skim milk they were to take home, it was a different matter. Ever since the industry started skim milk seems to have been placed on a different code, and it was not considered wrong to take more than one’s proper share.

The factory staff had a good deal more to do then than they now have. For instance they had to cut all the wood for the factory, using a frame hand saw. Water had also to be carted about half a m : .le for the engine.

Mr. Alf Faull, who afterwards became Superintendent for the Crown Dairy Company started his career at Mr, Bayly’s factory, following Mr. Purdie as assistant.

Mr. Purdie is certain that the Waitara Road factory was the first to start. Mr. W. Black, the first manager at Tikorangi for Mr. J. C. George, learnt butter-making at Waitara Road, under Mr. Purdie. The late Mr. Chew Chong also came out to Waitara Road on several occasions to inspect the separator and find out all that he could about it. It. was some time after that when Mr. Chew Chong started his first factory.