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The Cyclopedia of New Zealand [Auckland Provincial District]

The Northern Roller Milling Company

The Northern Roller Milling Company, Ltd. This company's mill is what was known as the Eight Hours Roller Mill, which was built by the late Mr. J. C. Firth, and is now run in conjunction with the roller mills formerly known as John Lamb's, under the management of Mr. Peter Virtue. Both the mills are of the modern type, and both are up to date, but the Eight Hours 11 is much the finer of the two. The five floors of this immense establishment are closely packed with machines of American manufacture, all dependent upon each other and engaged in the one operation of preparing flour and other products of wheat. The process vividly shows the great advance flour-milling has made from the millstones and flour-dressers of a few years ago to the wonderful combination of roller mills, scalpers, purifiers, centrifugals, universal flour-dressers, dust-collectors, wheat-cleanes, brushers, graders, and elevators now in use. The wheat is shot from the sacks into a bin, whence it is elevated into automatic weighers, which record the weight of the wheat as it passes into bins with a capacity of 40,000 bushels. After going through separators, scourers, brushers, blowers, and cockle separators, in which all imperfect grains, weeds, chaff, and dust are removed, the cleaned wheat passes along a conveyer to the mill proper, where it is again automatically weighed, to show the exact loss in the cleaning operations. It is then deposited in a grader, where the large and small grains are separated and passed on to the respective roller mills for the first break operations. After traversing seven miles of elevators, spouts, and conveyors, the separations are finally made, and the flour of the various grades passes through the respective packers page 410 into sacks and bags of the requisite sizes. Not a pound of wheat or flour is handled after the wheat is first shot from the sack. The capacity of the mills is 60 tons of flour per day, and, run on full time, they require about 900,000 bushels of wheat per annum. The machinery is driven by a Corliss double engine, of 250 horse-power nominal. The mills known as Lamb's are also very complete and efficient, but they differ from the Quay Street Mills to the extent that the machinery throughout is of the English pattern. The turnover of the two mins is equal to about £100,000 per annum.