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New Zealand Industries Series
No. 9. The Pantry Shelf.

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

A solemn scribe of the long ago said: “There is no art on which human health, happiness, progress and comfort are more dependent, than on cooking.” Man, at the beginning of things lived on roots, fruits, and the products of the chase. Cooking or condiments were not necessary to excite appetite, nor were physical jerks to the radio rhythm needed before breakfast. Getting the food provided all the exercise needed to give zest to the eating of it. However, he soon found that grains were better ground into flour particles, and more nutritious when subjected to fire. Cooking, therefore, soon took its place among the early arts of mankind. Our Maori race had developed a culture of cookery, as anyone who has tried sucking pig or fish roasted in their ovens of stones, can confirm.

We cannot claim for New Zealand any actual rating as a country of culinary leadership, except that we figure in the epicure's treatises for the possession of one super-soup, and two good sauces.

We do possess, however, a food standard which, as a general level, is the highest in the world. This has enabled the success of great modern industrial plants dealing with the making of the foundations of “building a meal” and these are on a scale large enough for many times the numerical population of New Zealand in comparison with older lands.

In the space of this article, I am only able to cover the making of the biscuit tribe, the making of baking powder—that first essential in good cooking, and the production of a wide range of condiments.

A dough-mixer at Griffins'.

It is a curious circumstance that the vineyards of France make possible the delectable cream-cakes at a Taumarunui afternoon tea. Without the wine vats of the Argonne, baking powder could not be made.

The story of baking powder is that it is compounded from a number of ingredients, of which the principal are tartaric acid and bicarbonate of soda. Tartaric acid comes from one source only, the incrustation on the lips of the vats during the fermentation of wine. This is called argol and from it comes the most important of all vegetable acids. Tartaric acid is the basis of all fizzy drinks, and of all the powders that take the place of yeast, and give “lightness to everything from pastry to everyday bread.”

I learned all this in the palatial home of Edmonds’ Baking Powder. I suppose we have no public building which is better known pictorially than this tall edifice with its spreading gardens and its “Sure to Rise” sun showing above the lofty parapet.

The story of Mr. T. J. Edmonds belongs to the old order. He came out to Canterbury as a young married man of twenty, his capital consisting of knowledge got during a thorough training with a large London confectionery firm. In the little grocery business he started in Christchurch, he found that housewives were calling for a more satisfactory baking powder. He had a knowledge of powders and essences, and went to work with zest. After endless labour and experiment he produced his first mixing, amounting to no less than 200 tins. Those sold well, and he saw and seized the opportunity. For three years he worked hard, made house-to-house calls, evolved and advertised the “Sure to Rise” motto, perfected his mixture, and in 1911, he produced and sold 878,268 tins. Today the output runs into millions, and the weighing and mixing machines handle 15,000 tins per day.

The story thus far is resembled by many industrial romances of New Zealand, but the institution on Ferry Road, Christchurch, is the expression in stone, cement and glass, of a unique personality.

The rooms are large, well-lit, lofty and airy, and the general impression of alabaster immaculateness is increased by the white coats, aprons and caps worn by the workers. There are few changes in Edmonds’ staff. On the wall in the manager's office was a group photograph of the whole personnel taken in 1929, and, with three exceptions, the picture would do for to-day's assembly.

From the lofty flat roof, there is a view of the Canterbury Plains and the City of Christchurch with the playing fields, lawns, gardens and greenhouses of the factory in the foreground.

It is hard to get the spaciousness into print without superlatives, but I can give as an instance that there is ample room for noble Kentia palms in among the great machines that produce the daily thousands of tins for the factory.

The restful effect of this sylvan greenery in among steel titans is unique.

Where a factory makes such articles as custard powder, baking powder, jelly crystals and so on, storage room for both ingredients and the finished article is a special problem. The bulk store-rooms here are built like fortresses as also are the impressive “undercover” loading banks.

Kentia palms with room to grow among the machines at Edmonds'.

The mixtures for the various powders are weighed and mixed with mathematical precision from accurate formulae. They proceed here by gravitation from the lofty top floors down to the final filling. One neat idea is that the wrapper of each tin is varnished, so that when attached it keeps the tin air-tight. Dust extractors are everywhere, and in the well-known homely expression you “could eat your meals off the floors.”

In the laboratory, experts maintain tests in series, so that every constituent is known to be of constant standard. The factory also contains a large case-making plant, which, like the tin-making equipment, is of the latest design.

I mentioned tartaric acid and wine vats at the beginning of this article. It is not generally known that the Edmonds factory in Sydney is the leading unit under the Southern Cross for the making of cream-of-tartar and tartaric acid. It is their own preparation, therefore, which goes into their baking powder.

Baking powder manufacture has produced a mine of good stories. As the manager at Edmonds’ said to me: “When anything goes wrong with the cake, the housewife slams the oven door, and blames the baking powder.” On one occasion a tin was sent back with the sharp report that “it was a complete failure.” Someone had the curiosity to weigh the tin on the weight-testing apparatus which is in constant use, and the tin proved to be exactly of the right weight. None of its contents had been used—and the cake naturally refused to rise!

“Sure to Rise” was a splendid motto in more ways than one, for Edmonds’ Factory in Christchurch is a model edifice, housing an enterprise whose well-deserved ascent is a matter of rightful pride to New Zealanders.

Mr. Edmonds came to New Zealand in 1879, but a quarter of a century before that Mr. John Griffin arrived in Nelson to pioneer the milling industry there. By 1865, he was engaged in the manufacture of sweets and biscuits with plant obtained from another famous Nelsonian, Samuel Kirkpatrick. From those small beginnings rose the great modern enterprise of Griffin & Sons Ltd. John Griffin's grandson, C. H. Griffin, the present manager, is the third generation executive in direct succession.

The growth of the business decided the company to make the dramatic decision to transfer to Wellington for distribution advantages, and launch out into the erection of a new and up-to-date biscuit factory on a large scale. The Nelson factory carries on the making of sweets and chocolates.

Edmonds’ top-storey weighing and mixing plant.

The selection of the factory site was an inspiration. The building of delicate pinks and green is itself a delight to the eye, but the settings are of the real stuff of poetry. Along the whole frontage meanders the quiet and limpid Waiwhetu, the “Star-Reflecting Water” of the Maori legend. Down to its banks slope lovely lawns and gay flower beds. Behind, tower the everlasting hills.

The grounds contain over five acres, laid out on a planned design of aesthetic value. A surprise still remains for the visitor in the large rectangular courtyard enclosed by the factory buildings. This is a green velvet lawn, bordered with a ribbon of three feet of flowers, and in the centre is a circular lily pool.

The buildings are all of one storey with roofs which are mostly windows. Even in the packing department the illusion seems complete that the work is being done outside “and the daisies.”

Griffins’ factory is the final answer to any claim that usefulness must necessarily be married to ugliness. Sylvan and man-made beauty here are mingled with the highest possible degree of efficiency. As my friend said to me, a “biscuit made here ought to feel that the Edenic surroundings have made it more succulent.”

This great unit is new as to every item. The buildings were designed, and the equipment bought, after consultation with the British company known to be the greatest makers of page 14

Spacious packing rooms at Griffins'.

biscuit-making machinery in the world. The endless band of specially tempered stainless steel is the last word, and it is not an overstatement to say that no plant in the world of biscuit-making is of more modernity or outranks the Griffin installation. It is the latest—which is the real explanation. Biscuit-making machinery is of the type that provides genuine entertainment. In the first place it is raising to the “'nth” degree, the actions of the “good light hand with pastry.” Here the homely domestic arts are given a supernal air.

The ingredients are not touched by the human hand. Two huge vertical mixers with huge plunging and turning blades handle 800 pounds of dough at a time, blending flour, honey, sugar, butter and so on with ease. The recipes are the work of skilled experts, and the quantities are measured with mathematical accuracy. For some types of biscuit, the dough is forced through an opening, and wire cutters snip off the required shapes. The “dough-brake” is the gargantuan development of the homely rolling-pin, and the dough, when it begins to see life, often has a journey of 300 feet. The blanket of dough has to have the requisite thickness, width and consistency, and then comes the problem of cutting out the biscuit shapes, stippling the pattern and embossing the names. Readers will get some idea of the complexity of these problems when reminded that the biscuits must work out to the correct number to the pound, they must fit the tins exactly, and the patterns must involve the least wastage. All these calculations have to relate to the biscuit after it has been cooked.

The ovens are gigantic, running up to over 100 feet in length. Windows are placed to enable observation as to how the slowly travelling biscuits are behaving. It is fascinating to watch these endless armies of rounds, rectangles and squares, slowly changing from pale dough into warm cream, and then to brown or whatever shade is proper to the particular biscuit. The endless steel band does all sorts of operations.

Among some that I saw was its delivery device which stacks the biscuits up on edge for the convenience of the swift fingers of the girl packers.

The ovens carry on with automatic exactness, delivering the precise degree of temperature, the requisite cooling effects, and “everything.” Any harassed housewife who has had to keep an eye on the oven will appreciate this tale.

Of course there are many complicated processes in the making of the innumerable varieties of fancy biscuits. Chocolate coating is interesting. Little stacks of biscuits run down and topple out on to a slowly moving conveyer which runs the biscuits along to the grid, which passes over a cauldron of hot chocolate. The putting-on of the coating is as simple as it is ingenious, and the chocolate itself is so prepared that it goes brittle immediately after cooling.

Reverse process on conveyer at Griffins'. (Biscuits fall flat).

Wafer biscuits are also well worth watching. They emerge as a large square of pink tissue paper, and after coating with a creamy mixture, the sandwich is completed and cut into shapes with little circular saws.

Griffins’ have instituted the practice of visiting days, and as many as 1,200 folk have perambulated through the works in one day. It is a genuine show place, anyway, from the lavishly furnished canteen and ballroom to the quiet room where a new biscuit is evolved.

Griffins' make their chocolate biscuits from their own brand of chocolate made in Nelson. Bycroft's, the great Auckland biscuit firm, make their biscuits from “Snowdrift” flour which is made just across the way. The plants are connected by a Rialto bridge, and the splendid modern plant of Bycroft's Ltd. was erected in 1937 in Chancery Street.

Here is another firm with a history. Mr. John Bycroft started as a flourmiller in 1845, in the old stone windmill at St. Andrew's Road, Epsom.

To-day the three-floored building is one of Auckland's greatest institutions. Here again, I noticed the atmosphere of spaciousness, light, airiness and cleanliness. Bycroft's is a busy place—and scrupulously clean. Biscuit-making here page 15

Endless steel band carrying biscuits at Griffins'.

is approached from the scientific angle, and they had just evolved a Proteena digestive biscuit, and there was something of the air of “Eureka” about the making of that tasty article. I spent some time in the Bycroft laboratory and made some discoveries—new for me and worth noting. In a world-wide industry such as biscuit-making, many recipes have become standardised, and are published in full detail in various technical books of reference. I was given an opportunity of comparing many of the standard Old World recipes with those used by Bycroft's. In every case, the New Zealand ingredients were of higher quality and of richer values.

This is one of the blessings of living in a land not only of milk and honey but of plentiful golden syrup, sugar and other toothsome foodstuffs. Moreover, the New Zealander, appreciating the high standard of this type of homecooking, is “biscuit-conscious” and nothing but the best will pass the consumer test.

At Bycroft's, I saw the endless trouble taken to test the various flours. A flour may be good for everything but biscuits, or for one type of biscuit. A “detecting chemist” makes the closest scrutiny for branny particles or other defects, and until I saw the spread samples coating the test slivers, I had no idea there were so many differences in flour. A small testing even stands in one of these rooms where new flavours or new ideas are finally tried out.

In the main factory, I met again the giant mixers with their blades like propellers, dealing with three sacks of flour at a time. The conveyer systems are similar to those already described, except that the cooling processes here are carried on by gently moving elevators. Our picture shows the long ovens at work, and I need not repeat the technical action of the baking. Packing is a science at Bycroft's. The waxpaper double-sealing process and kindred methods ensure freshness. It is worth remembering, too, that these great institutions provide a vast amount of work for artists, printers, and other folk who help in the making of the countless boxes. I had no idea of the enormous variety of biscuits we make in New Zealand until I saw at Bycroft's some assortments. They were delightful as pictures, with their many-coloured patterns and endless designs.

Bycroft's deserves its title of “The Model Biscuit Factory.”

Exterior of Griffins’ modern factory.

Now we have an entire change of diet.

My next visit was to Whittome Stevenson's establishment in Auckland. This firm has a nation-wide fame for pickles, sauces and condiments of all kinds, and proved to be a wonderhouse of new things. This is another family institution, for it was a Stevenson of the second generation who escorted me round the factory.

Reversing the usual process, I shall start at the rear of the factory, for here stands the vinegar brewery, and vinegar is the foundation of most pickles, sauces and whatnot. However, vinegar is not the whole story, for I learned that there were thirteen ingredients in Tomato Sauce, and no less than twenty-five in Worcester Sauce. I should mention, in passing, that Whittome Stevenson's brand of Worcester Sauce is the nearest I have met yet to the incomparable original, which is the despair of the nations.

The process of making vinegar is intricate. There is a sky-scraping erection rather like a small municipal water tower. To this is pumped up the vinegar wash which thereafter percolates down, storey by storey, passing through beechwood chips. Sugar, malt, water and yeast go into the first brewing. The resultant wash is then run into generators and subjected to various processes of air inlet and closing and so on.

Finally, I saw Whittome Stevenson's vinegar, as clear as wine, and as pure. Nothing is left to chance, for here is a history of research and long experience.

The actual making of sauces and pickles commences in the boiling room. Cauldrons of Staybrite steel hold the

(Continued on page 49).