page 10

Buy New Zealand Goods
and Build New Zealand
New Zealand Industries Series
No. 10. The Preserve Cupboard.

By O. N. Gillespie (Rly. Publicity photos)

Well-filled pantries are universal features of the New Zealand home, and it should be admitted that they are a good form of “scenery.” Jars of preserved fruits, gay-coloured cartons filled with dainties, brightly painted tins with goodies inside, and other decorative things in tinted uniforms make a well-stocked larder a spectacle of genuine beauty. I quote from Miss Katherine O'Brien's poem, published in this magazine some time ago:

Upon these laden shelves last season's wealth is stored away;
The jars are warm with coloured fruits in tempting rich array.
The plums are rosy marbles jostling in a scarlet sea,
And gooseberries are whiskered globes of green transparency;
Peaches and apricots that burned through golden summer weeks
In ripening stages on the bough now press their sun-flushed cheeks
Against relentless walls of glass……

I have discovered that New Zealand factories go a long way towards filling New Zealand food cupboards. In some cases a good beginning has been made with exporting this type of product. Scores of institutions could have been described in this article, but space exigencies limit me to four. They cover a wide range of activities from the making of rennet, multitudes of “things in tins” to the production of the cartons and boxes that house most of them. It is a colourful story.

New Zealand is rich in garden regions, and none of them fills the eye with a greater vision of Nature's opulence than the Hastings plains. Long ago, much of this area was planted in carefully-planned orchards. Where once Romneys and Jerseys had revelled in the abundant grass, peach groves flushed the landscape with pink blossom, and apples, pears, apricots, quinces and other fruits shone in the Hawke's Bay sunshine. These are still giving their largess, but lately new methods of utilising the fecundity of these alluvial flats have emerged. These have become possible through the development of canning.

The discovery that fruits, vegetables and other perishable foods could be preserved by sealing them up in cans, or tins, altered the food supply systems of the world. The credit for the discovery goes to a Frenchman, M. Appert, away back in 1810. Nowadays a Laplander can eat pineapples from Queensland, and the Fijian can enjoy sardines from Norway.

For many years a belief existed that canned foods lost their nutritive values. This matter naturally engaged the attention of medical authorities all over the world, and official enquiries have been both searching and thorough. A special committee of the British Medical Association, after exhaustive tests, issued last year a report which completely exonerates the tin. It found that the vitamin values of fruits and vegetables sealed in tins or cans were in excess of those possessed by the raw articles home-cooked, and were never inferior.

One investigator used the everyday rat in physiological experiments, and found that a dozen of them, fed for a period of years on tinned foods, thrived by comparison with the twelve who got their diet in its natural state.

Canning is an industry eminently suitable to New Zealand; it ought to become one of our major sources of exports. The fruit and vegetable “can” should be leaving our shores in quantities as great as the butter-box, the wool-pack, or the frozen lamb cover.

No better proof of the potentialities of this fountain of wealth production can be found than Wattie's Canneries at Hastings. Due to the initiative of the enthusiastic New Zealander who founded this enterprise, Mr. J. Wattie, new avenues have been opened up for the exploitation of the prodigious riches of the Hawke's Bay terrain.

A ton of asparagus is hard to visualize, but I was taken to a farmlet which, already this season, had produced thirty tons. At maturity, the crop from this 26 acres will produce annually, from 70 to 80 tons of the succulent vegetable.

I had already seen large areas near Napier newly won from the sea and all in asparagus, and there are many more round and about Hastings, all on page 11 the upward curve of production. Asparagus is a crop that improves with age as the roots strike farther and farther down, so that the possibilities are indeed great. This fertile soil produces a plump and tender “shoot” that is an epicure's dream. The scientific planning used in massed cultivation and the results achieved thereby, would turn any amateur gardener green with envy.

However, asparagus is not the end of the story. With my guide I saw fifteen acres of green beans, and then field after field of green peas. Peas and beans are planted at regular intervals to ensure a succession of pickings. The dimensions to which this side of the industry has attained can be guessed from the fact that last season 500 pickers were engaged upon products for Wattie's Canneries. I can foresee the day when square miles of green vegetables will be all over these teeming plains.

Modern canning methods are in use at Wattie's, for the founder has made many trips abroad. He stated in all modesty that so far as this industry is concerned we are abreast of the world. This claim may be readily conceded when it is learned that the Wattie output is sold every year, before it is made, and, indeed, the company has to employ a rationing system.

The factory is well worth a visit, and it is comforting to record that large additions are in progress. The reputation of the peaches and pears from this place is so high that I asked if there was any secret process. The answer was plain and intelligible. The requisites for getting good results in the tinning of fruit are three: first, the fruit should not have long transport before its factory handling; next, the inspection for specks, blemishes and so on, should be thorough; lastly, the cooking and sealing processes should be done on up-to-date lines. All these requisites are in existence here. The fruit is grown, as it were, next door, the plant is the most modern that money can buy, and the staff are good New Zealanders. It is also true that the peaches and pears of this area are themselves high-grade samples of fruits. However high may be the reputation of Wattie's canned fruits, I almost provoked applause when I mentioned the tinned vegetables to a business friend. Wattie's asparagus is packed green and the flavour is perfectly natural. I watched the sorting, cutting and packing, where endless care and patience are allied to impressive skill. One of the interesting machines is the “steps and stairs” washing machine which cascades the asparagus shoots down through falling sprays and delivers them to the packing system.

The green pea filling machine is another ingenious apparatus which works on a roundabout hopper idea, filling the tins as they circle round underneath, each with an exact weight of peas. The shelling machine is another uncanny affair. Inside a huge cylindrical colander, paddles revolved which are slightly splayed so that the hulls fly outwards and the green globules drop through the holes into conveyers. But the head piece of the mechanical marvels is the Pea Viner. Loss in hand-picking is high and constant, but the Viner simply reaps and strips the crop, threshes the peas gently but efficiently, disposes of the leaves and stems, and the loss is trifling.

It is unnecessary to describe in detail all the processes of steeping in syrup or brine, and the cooking, except that the resultant products prove that the methods used are the best. Wattie's Canneries are facing a golden future, and deserve honourable mention in the leadership of civic and industrial progress in New Zealand.

I next visited the old-established firm of Thompson and Hills Ltd., who make the famous “Oak” products. The factory is in Auckland, and its raw materials come from the hinterland of the province, both North and South. This imposing institution had a typical New Zealand origin, one of the founders having been a house-to-house vendor of fruits, and the other a home-manufacturing jam-maker. I wish there were space here for the tales of courage and adventure of those early days in the firm's history. To-day, this great place employs about page 12 three hundred New Zealanders, and turns out a bewildering variety of luscious things.

It has its own tin-making plant which includes a machine that runs off covers at 150 per minute. I walked through street after street of piled-up containers of jam pulp. This is scientifically prepared and housed in hermetically sealed containers. Indeed, the whole approach to every problem at Thompson and Hills is scientific. My cicerone was a university man, and from him I got a glimpse of the vast range of technical knowledge and the high degree of technical skill required here. A jam-making factory is simply an extension on planned principles of the traditional skill of the experienced housewife. The central principle of jam-making is that the boiling of fruits mixed with sugar sterilizes the whole mixture and causes the juice to develop “setting” qualities due to the presence of pectin bodies which always exist in ripe fruits. The aromatic and flavouring principles of the fruits must be preserved. Personal skill enters into factory work to a larger degree, if anything, than in the cook's kitchen. I watched at the “Oak” factory, the huge copper cookers where men with paddles were stirring continuously. Every now and then a man would hold up the paddle and watch the drip. From the appearance of that falling drop, he knew in an instant when the jam was ready. A swift trip with the foot, and the whole huge vat emptied its contents to be quickly cooled. Seconds of delay may ruin the whole boiling or wreck its colour. In commercial jam-making, colour is vital, and yet, throughout the whole range of the “Oak” products, no artificial colouring is used at all.

Marmalade making is still more fascinating to watch. The jam part is made in a somewhat similar fashion to that of any other fruit, but is finally a clear jelly. To this is added the peel turned into dainty slivers by shredding machines. This method gives the delectable tang to the flavour. I was interested in the inspection of the marmalade jars, which are carried on an endless belt. The slightest sign of a speck or a blemish in the sparkle produces a quick pounce and rejection. I would have passed the whole lot that I saw “getting the gate.”

The range of “Oak” products is immense. I saw girls in blue packing spaghetti, done, by the way, with the firm's own tomato sauce. I saw bacon and beans being packed. The beans small, dry and white, are first of all steeped, and then spread out upon a screen, gently agitated so that quick fingers can remove all half or discoloured beans. Into each tin drops a nice morsel of bacon.

I was interested in the rows of filter bags, and still more engrossed by the long lines of tins and jars kept as check samples. It is a good idea, too, for tins, after some types of filling, to drop into water to break their fall.

The figures are exciting: 2,000 tons of tomatoes are consumed each year; thousands of pounds' worth of stainless steel are in daily use; twenty-three capping machines work continuously. There is still a large element of handwork, for feminine fingers are still superior to any machines for many of the slicing and assembling jobs. I watched the “Oak” Fruit Salad being prepared from pine-apple, pear, passion-fruit, cherries, apricots — all fresh fruit. By the way, no dried apricots or other hydrated fruits are used in “Oak” preparations.

One of the most fascinating sights in the whole great place is the making of candied peel. First of all, well-shaped orange peels are selected for consistency and thickness. They are soaked in brine for a whole year, and then are steeped for twelve days in syrup whose sugar content is gradually strengthened. Slowly the peels take on a transparency and a standard sweetness. Preserved ginger is another interesting article to watch for; to be portable, it has to undergo a drying and sugar dusting process without impairing the juiciness. One general impression that I got was that of scrupulous cleanliness. Shining copper, stainless steel, and speckless glass are used in all the filling operations. The system of endless tiny cold showers for page 13 cooling the tins is ingenious, and, like everything else about the place, wholly hygienic. It would be interesting to find how many people depend upon the making of “Oak” products for a livelihood, for it would comprise orange growers in the Far North and Motueka growers of raspberries. I was proud as I left this fine New Zealand establishment. Its ideals of workmanship are high and its tackling of its manufacturing problems typically practical and efficient.

The corollary to a dish of fruit is junket, and I paid a visit to the New Zealand Co-operative Rennet Co. Ltd. at Eltham, the makers of Renco products. Eltham is a small Taranaki town of pretty homes and the usual range of civic amenities, but the Renco factory is a national institution. Its cheese-making rennet was used last season for 99.5 of the Dominion make of cheese, and its household articles are on an almost similar scale of marketing. Renco products are sold to the Australian market, and the export outlook steadily grows more promising.

The recently-erected laboratory building is a credit to New Zealand. I need not go into the details of its equipment, but in lofty room after room, I saw installations of the latest scientific apparatus designed to assist in all the multitudinous problems of the dairy industry. There is a library whose volumes are drawn from all the leading scientific institutions of the globe. I visited the well-appointed dark room, saw a new instrument for measuring and appraising milk content, and I inspected a weighing balance which is accurate to the ten-thousandth part of a gramme, and is so delicately adjusted that it has to be insulated from any floor quiver by being supported on its own pillars from the ground. Analytical and research work in chemistry is carried on here, and there is the usual bewildering array of stoppered bottles holding chemicals and liquids, test-tubes, and all the appointments of a college of science. Evidence of the value of the work being done in this model university of farming science is perhaps best contained in such a brochure as “Practical Measures in the Prevention of Nutritional Diseases in Dairy Cattle.”

The Renco company's scientific staff is contributing valuable research work all the time, work which is of enormous utility to the whole of our country. The resolution of the company to continue its services to the community in this regard is evinced by the recent purchase of an experimental farm. From the practical working of actual Taranaki acres, observations will be made. I also saw experimental vats for the making of cheese on the premises. This great concern is run by men who realise the true meaning of the title word “Co-operative.”

Rennet is made from the fourth or rennet stomach of the bobby calf. The technical term is “vell” and the New Zealand supply is sufficient to make the rennet for the total consumption of New Zealand and Australia. The vells come to the factory in sacks of 1,000, each vell in its own wrapper. They are prepared under Government supervision and are of a clean and even quantity unknown in any other country. I paid a quick visit to the big cool store where they are kept, but the best evidence of the scale of the company's operations is seen in the huge storage vats, six holding 3,000 gallons of rennet, and six holding 1,000. Samples are kept and each batch is tested every month for a year. Though rennet-making for cheese factories is the company's bulk line, it has many other activities. Renco turns out a Stock Lick, a mineral mixture for cattle and sheep, prepared from a formula as near perfection as scientific research and practical experience can devise. “Elthamol” veterinary ointment is also much prized. The company is also, of course, widely-known both here and in Australia for its annatto seed cheese-colouring preparation.

From the point of view of this article, however, it is the range of Renco household products which is most interesting. Here is made the seductive coloured and flavoured ren-

(Continued on p. 49).