FASCINATING

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 678, 1 June 1929, Page 7

FASCINATING

A VISIT TO THE “OAK’' FRUIT PRESERVING WORKS We step over the threshold and find ourselves surrounded by fruit, in a room of ■white walls and white scrubbed floor. It is the fresh fruit department. All is clean and bright, and how animated the scene, with the smiling faces and graceful activity of the girls—in spotless overalls —as they move among the piles of delicious looking fruit or sit at tables deftly grading and preparing fruit for the jam boilers and fruit eanners. We pass through another doorway and enter a lofty hall-like apartment, where a delightful aroma pervades the air. It arises from a dozen gleaming copper pans in which red ripe strawberries and crystal sugar are engaged in a mad dance together at the bidding of boiling steam below them. The cook briskly done, the steam turned off and with the tilt of a lever, a flood of strawberry conserve pours in a ruby red stream toward the gleaming glass and silver-like containers waiting to capture and hold a fill of this luscious preserve. We now' climb a tower-like structure and look down on a boiling cauldron of a red and angry liquid, which foams and splashes and with mighty heaves throws off great white clouds of steam. We gaze enthralled before us. In the cauldron is the famous "Oak” tomato soup, in the making. tVe hurry on and shoot up in a lift, to the top of a whitewashed concrete building, where we find wizards in white coats and aprons performing the magical process of transforming lemon and orange skins into "Oak” candied peel, all crystallised and transparent. Time is up and much left to see, to warrant another visit to the model “Oak” Factory.