BELLOCHANTUY'S SEAWEED FACTORY

Seaweed became a major industry for The Western and the Orkney Isles from the late 1600's onwards, a major source
for chemicals such as soda, potash and iodine, the Scottish industry's contribution clearly apparent when Britain was
isolated from Spain, hitherto the main production source, during the Napoleonic and other and later wars.

As the average wage of the cottar at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century was £18 per annum, it
can be easily understood that money was scarce, in fact almost non-existent; for this reason, means, of supplementing
their meagre income became necessary.

Many of the women were engaged in kelp-making, as the little bays around the coast produced abundant quantities of
sea-weed. This wraic, as it was called, was cut and gathered from the half-hidden rocks and dried in the sun.

When sufficiently dry it was burned in a kiln, 9 ft x 2 ft x 2 ft., prepared for the purpose with a lining of straw to start
the burining process. On a good day several clouds of smoke could be seen along the shore as the kelp-gatherers were
busy at work. It burned down to a dark brown gluey substance which solidified when cool.

It was then cut into slabs and sold to the merchant at Muasdale where the sailing ships, "Margaret Wotherspoon" and
"Dumbarton Castle" (wrecked at Achnafad in 1913 after dragging her anchor from Gigha in a gale) called to ship it to
Glasgow. There it was processed for the extraction of iodine. Soda was also a bye-product and was used in soap
making. The average price paid was £3 per ton.

When it is noted that it took 24 tons of seaweed to make one ton of kelp it will be appreciated that the lot of the kelp-
maker was not an easy one.

The cutting and carrying of 24 tons of dripping seaweed, laying it out to dry and turning it daily to the sun before finally
burning it, must have been laborious work indeed. In some cases 10s per ton had to be paid to the owner of the land
on whose shores the seaweed was gathered.

In Kintyre only the shores on the Duke of Argyll's estate had to pay this royalty. Two women could be working
practically side by side, with only the march burn between them, and one would receive £3 per ton, while the other
received £2 10s after paying 17 per cent in royalty.

The work was often carried out by a widowed mother and to her, 10/- (50 new pence) was a lot of money; many had
therefore reason to be grateful to landowners for the privilege of gathering wraic from the shore.

Between the years of 1934 and 1942, though, the tangle (genus Laminaria or Fucus) never had the chance to waste away
on the shore.

In 1934, following several years of severe winter gales, which threw large quantities of 'tangle' seaweed onto the western
shore of Kintyre, Cefoil Ltd., a company later absorbed into Alginate Industries, decided to build a processing plant, to produce
sodium alginate fibre, from which a clear film, 'Cefoil', could be manufactured, on the north side of the Alt Burn, which lies
½ mile south of Bellochantuy and to the south of Putchecan Lodge.

Sodium alginate fibre was a relatively new substance, discovered in 1881 by E.C. Stanford, a scientist working in
Scotland investigating Laminaria, a species of kelp.

Sodium alginates are jelly-like carbohydrates used for their water holding, gelling, emulsifying and stabilising
properties, which are desirable in a range of applications. Alginates serve to stabilise meringues and ice cream,
improve the head on beer, allow fast-setting of puddings, emulsify oils and, serve in E-numbers 400 to 405 and,
providing the same properties in the cosmetic, medical, paint and other industries, can be used to produce alkali-
soluble fibres.

Unfortunately, by the time the factory was ready to manufacture the film in volume, 'Cefoil' had been surpassed by a
competitor's superior film, 'cellophane' and the Bellochantuy business was almost ready to collapse.

With the outbreak of World War II, the factory fell under control of The Ministry of Supply and was used to process
the seaweed into materials which could be used to manufacture products of wartime value such as camouflage paint,
artificial silk (for parachutes), 'cellophane' and custard powder.

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The directors of Cefoil Ltd., based in Maidenhead, were headed by a Dr C W Bonniksen, then a prominent industrial chemist and
advisor to The Ministry of Defence and an industrial chemist, by the name of Mitchell, put in charge of the Bellochantuy factory.

The factory, up and running, brought a Canadian, Dr Rose, to design underwater cutting and harvesting equipment to
maximise the growing potential for seaweed-based products. Rose had worked in California where quite large ships were
regularly employed to harvest the seaweeds and, the Japanese having too a considerable interest in the industry, Cefoil
were anxious to be first in the field with new developments.

In 1981, nearly forty years after the closure of Bellochantuy's Seaweed Factory, a former maintenance joiner, Charles
Hunter, who worked at the construction and operation of the factory, set out some notes to found the following account, his
personal opinion being that Cefoil did indeed establish a considerable lead in the field through its work at Bellochantuy.

The seaweed delivered in its natural state was placed into large 20' x 5' x 4' 6" wooden boxes and the space housing the boxes
then fumigated with sulphur, burnt in an adjacent metal furnace, the fumes driven in by an electric fan.

Much to the employees delight, fumigation was soon deemed unnecessary and abandoned. Workers standing down-
wind of the fumes had complained of extreme choking and feeling their chests 'like raw flesh'.

The seaweed was next cut into 2-inch strips and shredded by special machines which Cefoil Ltd. had built to their own specifications in
Germany.

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Cefoil Ltd. soon started to buy in seaweed from the islands and from Ireland paying crofters a tonnage rate for
gathering and baling the weed and a puffer was regularly on charter to bring the raw weed into Campbeltown where the
weed was taken to the old blanket factory in Glebe Street to be cut up using second-hand tobacco cutting machines before being
taken out by road to Bellochantuy.

Now the shredded weed was placed in vats, heated by a vertical steam boiler. The vats were 11' x 11' x 11' in size and to their
contents of water and shredded weed some sulphuric acid was added.

Motor driven impellers stirred the vats continuously until the vats' contents were precipitated and pumped to outside settling tanks, again these
tanks were wood-lined.

The liquid from the settling tanks was then pumped off into vats in the main factory building and two different (unnamed) chemicals
were added. Under pressure the liquid was reduced to a white 'jelly-like' substance which was then bagged and taken to
Campbeltown to be spread out on the drying floors of Scotia Distillery, an arrangement having been made with the companies when
the factory at Bellochantuy was built.

The drying of the white 'jelly' left the finished product as a powder like oatmeal and this was then bagged and delivered to Messrs,
Albright & Wilson of Oldbury, a simple pilot plant, built of wood, then converting the crude calcium alginate into
sodium salt.

From the powder came custard powder, camouflage paint, cellophane paper and artificial silk later used for parachutes and, no
doubt, some ladies' underwear.

Demand for Cefoil's product increased to such an extent that a three-shift round the clock work pattern had to be
introduced. More seaweed was bought in from crofters on the Hebridean Islands and Ireland, who received a tonnage
rate for cutting and baling.

Cefoil chartered a steam puffer to carry the raw material to Campbeltown, where it was taken to a disused blanket
factory in Glebe Street and shredded by second-hand tobacco cutting machines before being transported by road to
Bellochantuy.

Too as demand increased, a three shift-system of working round-the-clock was introduced and a staff totalling some 45 men
and women employed. Ahead of its time, Cefoil Ltd, encouraged workers ideas and no matter how small each idea each worker was
rewarded in some small way for their contribution.

With war, a government commission came to Bellochantuy in 1940 to look at expanding production but recommended that,
instead of expansion, there they would build new factories at Barcaldine and Girvan at a then cost of £250,000.

Bellochantuy closed in 1942 and, ironically, was then producing more in a day than the factory at Girvan could produce in a week !

After the war, there were reports of investigations into the use of sodium alginate fibre as a lightweight replacement for
balsa wood components used in aircraft construction, a prototype 'seaweed' De Havilland Mosquito supposedly built
but the project abandoned in the light of test results.

In 1942, just as they had closed the Bellochantuy factory, The Ministry of Supply began work on research into
automated harvesting of Laminaria species. A 'lawn-mower like' cutting head, attached to a suction hose was
suspended from a lifeboat and produced some promising but erratic results and, in 1943, a 57 foot power-boat, called
the 'Prospecto', was provided for expanding the project and when The Scottish Seaweed Research Association (SSRA)
was formed the next year, the project was handed over to them.

The experiment proved quite complex as the machinery involved was mechanically unreliable and would easily clog
with stones, weed and on some occasions even fish ! In addition, the practicalities of working the machinery in any
sort of swell were problematic. Tests were run from the Clyde Estuary to Mallaig and South Skye and produced a
considerable catalogue of problems, with the machine only operating sporadically before clogging up or cutting out.
The maximum cutting rate obtained was about 4½ tons an hour, but this rate was not sustainable for much beyond 15
minutes.

In 1945 the 'Prospecto' took part in a major survey of the seaweeds around the Scottish coasts, although she was not
operating as a harvester. After this, the boat and machinery were eventually dismantled and that project too was
abandoned.
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