£600,000 Salvage

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 586, 12 February 1929, Page 7

£600,000 Salvage

Big Savings at HudsonKssex Factory Money from junk—millions from materials and by-products ordinarily considered valueless—a salvaging so successful that it yields an annual economy in excess of £600,000! Such is the outcome of Hudson’s policy of wasting nothing, of utilising everything but the hum of machinery. In one factory building, huge laundering machines receive great quantities of oil-soaked rags. After an automatic washing, the rags emerge fresh, dry, and clean, ready for another round of service. One rag, or a few of them, means little. But w'hen rags are used as they axe at Hudson’s, the scheme of laundering and re-using them saves the company around £SO a day. or quite a neat sum in the course of a year. Rags are not passed out indiscriminately, either, when a workman wants a fresh rag he tjurns in the soiled one. SAVING ON THE COAL BILL In another department a battery of power saws cut the sides of the hundreds of wooden packing cases and crates—in which various supplies reach the factory daily—into standard lengths suitable for the making of shipping boxes, in which parts, accessories, and other goods leave the factory. The remaining lumber ends- are fed into the steel jaws of an enormous wood hog, which grinds them into bits the size of shelled maize, and these bits are burned in the power plant. The heat derived monthly from the burning of wood ends equals that produced by 300 tons of coal. The nails? They are separated from the wood bits by powerful magnets and sold by the ton, to be melted and reused. OIL FROM CHIPS Nor is that all. Hudson-Essex uses lubricating oil in tremendous quanti T ties. For instance, a considerable quantity of the oil clings to the metal chips and borings, resulting from machining operations. The borings are passed through centrifugal separators, w r hich not only reclaim 80 per cent, of the oil, but also clean the borings. The clean borings are sold back to the foundries, where they command a highes price than oil borings. Also, hundreds of gallons of oil are saved. Hudson employs an oil -reclaiming plant which recovers 2,400 gallons of oil a day—and it is bette.r oil, cleaner oil, than"can be bought originally. .