New Zealand Industries Series
No. 16.—Soaps And Chemicals.

As this series of articles on our country's industries comes to its close, I am indeed a proud New Zealander. I have visited over one hundred manufacturing units of all sizes and types, producing with precision and skill all manner of things. I have watched a mighty “K” engine being made, and a scooter; a twenty-ton vat of soap and a tiny tube of junket tablets. I have been alternately impressed by gigantic plant installations and comforted by the beauty of factory buildings and appointments. Above all, I have been struck by the ingenuity and resource of our experts of all degrees, and by their habit of world travel in pursuit of world knowledge. I have the backing of more than one distinguished observer from overseas in making this statement: the distinguishing and universal characteristic of New Zealand plants is their adaptability, accompanied by an “outstanding proportion of original devices.” In other words, more “gadgets” are first thought of in New Zealand than anywhere else in the world. I do not pretend to have made a comprehensive survey, but the articles do comprise, in retrospect, a reasonably adequate cross-section. The broad generalisation to give is that we can make most things here which minister to modern needs, and make possible a modern standard of living. I can foresee the time when we shall make everything; it is purely a matter of development. What we now make is of world parity in design and efficiency; what we make is the work of fellow-citizens who are thereby provided with a proper return. “Buy New Zealand Goods” is not a patriotic motto; it is civic commonsense and commercial prudence.

Most folk have the sensible habit of keeping their medicine cupboard in the bathroom, so that, before I deal with the high pitch to which soap-making has been developed in New Zealand, it might be as well to look at an institution which makes basic drugs and other chemical preparations. I paid a call on the Q.-F. Laboratories, Wellington. This familiar landmark is usually regarded as the manufacturing unit for two famous proprietary articles, but the range of its activities is astonishing.

The wounded mill manager wrought better than he knew when long ago he wrote a letter of praise saying that the Fluenzol gargle was “Quicker Than Other Liniments.” Those initial capitals were to lead an army of production units outside the scope of any possible prevision.

The history of the company is typical of many New Zealand organisations. The founder, the late Cecil W. Palmer, was famous for his almost fanatical belief in his preparations. He was succeeded by Mr. W. H. Stevens, some sixteen years ago, and the policy of expansion has been steady ever since. The present imposing edifice stands foursquare as an important addition to New Zealand's array of utility producers.

I went over the factory with the brilliant chemist whose long line of letters behind his name only represents part of his attainments, for he is a man of long overseas experience in the science of manufacturing.

The Q.-F. factory is packed with original and effective new designs in mechanisms. Stainless steel is everywhere, and there is an air of cleanliness and wholesomeness, helped by the lustral white of the machinery, walls, and overalls.

I examined a contrivance that tests with exactness the lasting powers of Proxogen, the tintometer which checks uniformity in the colours of essences, ointments and so on, and I was intrigued with the ingenuity displayed in adapting a tablet coating mechanism till it played the role of a pill-rolling vehicle.

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Q.-F. Laboratories make the whole range of tablets, a complex and precise series of processes, requiring the use of granulating methods, careful drying, sieving, compressing, and finally, a sugar coating contrivance. The latter is done by a large hollow sphere which rotates on a canted axis. The tablets swing round and round and the sugar coating adheres to them. A regulated current of hot air dries the coating gently, and inspection proves whether or not the unpleasant-tasting interior is completely protected from the palate. The same spheres will make pills, the particles rotating till they become perfectly shaped little globules.

The Proxogen plant is worth special study. The output is one hundred gallons a day, and the process is too long to describe in detail here. A distilled water plant is installed, and there are serried rows of filter presses. An impressive apparatus makes ointment, using white paddles rather like small steamer propellers which work in a mixer furnished with smooth stone millstones to reduce all the materials to the needed fineness. It should be mentioned that every now and then Mr. Harvey would pause and say: “This was made in New Zealand from my own design.” And the observation covered mechanisms ranging from large metal vats to more complex apparatus.

Filter presses consist of hollow plates which force the liquids through canvases, and it was noteworthy that in the Proxogen department these were all coated with oxygen-proof paint.

In the granulating room, there are 180 trays in enclosures steam-heated from underneath, and the resultant tablets are turned out by the machines at the rate of 4,800 per hour. I saw 84,000 tablets in one hollow sphere being sugar-coated, and next door a similar number being polished.

As one door opened, there came a whiff of perfume, heady and seductive. I was shown a bottle of rose perfume containing £215 worth of essence, which is easily understood when I learned that it takes a ton of rose leaves to make one pound of oil.

I should like to say, in leaving this admirable establishment, that it displays confidence in its future in a most practical way. The chief chemist has made provision everywhere for “doubling up,” and the roomy premises give ample facilities. The wide scope of Q.-F. Laboratories, the sturdy determination to adhere to stability and purity as watchwords, and its “chemically pure” composition as an all New Zealand company, are all features that call for high praise. Moreover, a full page would be required to contain the list of enterprises in New Zealand devoted to the making of drugs, chemicals, and kindred products. Vast premises such as those of Kempthorne, Prosser & Co. exist in many New Zealand centres, making everything from familiar toothache drops to stupendous outputs of our farming “life-line” fertilisers.

Everyone who has made the East Harbour trip to the Bays of Wellington will have noticed the spreading collection of modern buildings which house the vast enterprise of Lever Brothers, a household word from “China to Peru.” In an issue of the Port Sunlight quarterly, “Progress,” there is an article which describes the Petone site as combining “utility with beauty of surroundings,” and elsewhere in the same issue there are pictures of page 11 the Sunlight factories in Sydney and Calcutta. I learned, too, that the coconut oil used in the Wellington factory comes “from one of our own islands.” It is a proud saying that the sun never sets on the Sunlight industry, best described as a “commercial commonwealth of over 300 associated companies.” Whaling stations and palm plantations, olive groves, and the tall, white temple by the Thames, the Unilever Building, all belong to this world organisation.

But the most famous creation of the late Lord Leverhulme was Port Sunlight. “Some day to build houses in which work-people will be able to live and be comfortable” was the modest outline of his dream, in 1888, and the brilliant realisation is known the world over. Port Sunlight is a gracious model town of six thousand people, where life is pleasant, and planned, where modern standards of physical comfort are common to all its inhabitants. I value more than the material amenities the noble realities of brotherhood and communal endeavour for which Port Sunlight stands. Pensions, educational facilities, sports fraternities, holiday provisions and other civic advantages, are matters of right for the workers in this great British institution.

All honour to the founder who made the affirmation, startling at the time, that “the cheerfulness of the Port Sunlight community was the measure of the prosperity of Lever Brothers Ltd.”

I was soon initiated into the mysteries of modern soap-making on massed production lines. Here is nothing of “hit or miss” methods. Scientific precision, analytical research, and endless, scientific and thorough testing go into every process.

In the main laboratory, with its technical library and intricacy of glass tubes, retorts and complex apparatus, I was shown the shelves of “standard” preparations. Every new batch of soap, bottle of glycerine, tube of shaving cream, tablet of toilet soap, and every other of the long list of Lever products, has to conform in every minute particular to these, or be immediately rejected.

“No soap; so he died” is more than the opening line of a superb piece of nonsense verse. Soap was known in the misty dawn of time; there was a soap factory in Pompeii when it was overwhelmed by Vesuvius, and our own hardy pioneers made soap from the fat of New Zealand sheep and the potash got from the burning of New Zealand timber. The scientific basis of the processes of soap-making were, however, only dimly understood until a century ago.

For the layman, soap production is managed by the union of a metallic salt with a fatty acid. Fats, as we know them, whether vegetable or animal, are composed of fatty acids and glycerine. “Saponification” takes place when the mineral salts take the fatty acids away from the glycerine. The minerals used are alkalis, sodium and potassium, because these are soluble in water.

This job being done, the soap-maker has then to separate the soap from the glycerine, and this is done by using salt to which soap is unfriendly, as anyone who has tried to lather in sea water will readily believe. The panroom at Levers is an example of this process on a large scale. The vats hold twenty tons of soap at a time, and an ingenious system of movable levels, steam pipes, and inlets and outlets, contrive to drain off the glycerine remainder and precipitate the soap.

A huge boiling of Sunlight soap was page 12 reminiscent of a hot pool at Rotorua, complete with the occasional “plop” and the steady rumbling.

“Lifebuoy” has the familiar reddish colour, and as the vats recede in content, pinkish stalactites make their appearance on the sides. The distinctive blending of the ingredients means that every huge vat has not only a distinctive scent but a different con - sistency and colouring.

When everything is found to be in order with a boiling of household soap, it is run into long cooling frames, rectangular tall boxes whose sides let down. The great slabs are cut into bars by wires pulled through by pressure. These are dried and proceed to a pressing machine which stamps the tablets. I noticed an occasional deep notch in the large slabs and found these were for laboratory testing purposes. The packing in cartons is the usual mingling of almost human mechanism and incredibly dexterous fingers.

These household soaps differ in make-up, and the gradations are got by kilful adaptation of materials, and the use of different alkalis, resins and other chemical ingredients.

Now, toilet soap-making is quite “another story.” Here the processes are more complex, the ingredients highly selective, and infinite pains are taken. The soap itself, delicately pure, goes over water-cooled rollers which make it into an incredibly thin film which is scraped off by set knife edges. Drying chambers concentrate this film till it becomes 63 per cent. pure soap, but it has still more troubles ahead. It has a seven-fold milling and refining journey. To ensure the full permeation of the perfume, an elaborate set of happenings takes place. After the usual frame cooling, toilet soap is milled into shavings and matured again in a carefully regulated oven. Then the perfume is added and again the strips are worked until they are plastic and come out from the marbling mills like ribbons that have been accordion-pleated. Finally, the ribbons are pressed into bars, cut into neat tablets, and double stamped under tremendous pressure.

But one begins to see life in earnest at Levers’ factory in the preparation of Lux. This is made in a many-towered court of white where the intensive purpose is to get complete dryness in the flakes. Here you can watch the Lux diamonds pressed out in thousands, dried and dried again and again, finally ascending a lofty turreted flue. At long last there emerges a snowy white flake powder of ethereal softness and almost unbelievable purity. Here seemed to be the very soul of soap.

Finally, we looked in at the making of Persil and kindred preparations. The constituents for these are weathered in bags for six weeks. They then pass through sifting grids, go up in conveyers again to grinding machines, and generally are tormented, bedevilled and purified till they pass the tests of the laboratory experts.

The oxygen content of Persil is most ingeniously effected, and is a potent agent in this unique preparation.

In the beginning, readers will recall that brine is used to separate the soap from the glycerine, and nothing is more interesting than the care taken with this, the most important by-product of soap manufacture.

There is a newly-installed great department here which is reminiscent of a modern liner's engine-room, with its big boilers, steel-plated floors, and huge pipes. Here, in great vacuum boilers, the glycerine can be seen through the peepholes, furiously boiling, and eventually it emerges, chemically pure and completely colourless. This plant is the very last word in this branch of the scientific utilisation of soap-making by-products.

The activities of this vast establishment which provides opportunities for so many hundreds of New Zealanders are almost countless. Sunlight products, from Rinso to shaving cream, are known wherever cleanliness is considered worthwhile.

While in Auckland, I spent an interesting morning in the old-established works of the “Union Oil, Soap, and Candle Company.”

In this great factory is made the famous Taniwha soap, and here again I saw the up-to-date and scientific method in use which has revolutionised the cost and quality of soap. I saw copra being ground into its component parts in an enormous mill, which separates the pure oil and leaves a pollard-like substance which becomes a nutritious pig and poultry food. The oil is extensively used in Taniwha products.

Here is made the famous “Sylvia” starch. Starch is made from rice; it is ground into a fine powder first and then put through a number of processes which take out the gluten content and other impurities. Next it goes into drain boxes, and, after a period, is cut into squares. These are carefully wrapped and put into a “crusting” room, where great heat is applied. As these parcels are unwrapped, snowy starch is revealed. The qualities of Sylvia starch are genuinely due to the infinite patience and thoroughness of the preparation. The rice silo has to be seen to be believed, and the huge flat tanks where the starch is seen to be slowly solidifying into white flaky masses are imposing. Three hundred tons of rice are held at one time, and from this is distilled the milk-white liquor which is finally to become starch.

For sheer scenic value, however, I recommend this company's department devoted to the manufacture of soda crystals. A trip through this gleaming place with its changing panoramas is rather like a trip to the Franz Jozef glacier. Here are ice caves, miniature crevasses, overhanging transparent ledges of strange beauty and variety.

The Union Company specialises in this form of housewives’ help.

The making of candles is an art, and to my astonishment I found that the demand for this form of lighting is keen. “The more things change, the more they are the same,” seems to be as true in New Zealand to-day as when the French cynic first said it.

I had forgotten the variety of shapes, colours and materials in candles. There are the transparent wax, the graceful fluted taper, the stearin, and the solid, every-day sperm. The tallow, paraffin or other constituent, has to be carefully treated to give it the solidity required. The big vats hold eight tons at a time, and the contents are steamed into them, distilled, and then set out in trays for cooling. A high-powered hydraulic press takes the next step, extracting out all the oil. The candle-making machines are uncanny and complicated mechanisms which are the nearest examples of perpetual motion I have seen, particularly in the surpassing ingenuity of the wick-drawing method. An endless string draws through in a continuous line through the moulds which are set in rows like a colonnade of small pillars.

The Union Soap, Oil and Candle Company is one of New Zealand's veteran enterprises. Its name derives from a combination between two manufacturers whose actual start was made in 1865, the company dating in its present form back to 1882. I found this big organisation a happy family, many of the seniors having a lifetime of service behind them.

It is a fine example of New Zealand initiative, enterprise and pioneering courage. At the Otahuhu works I was conducted by a trained chemist of high scientific attainments, and I would like to stress that in these three great units visited, I was impressed with the number of experienced and enthusiastic experts of high practical and academic standing employed by the firms in question.

In these branches of industry, New Zealand is marching with the times.