Читать книгу Sir David de Villiers Graaff - Ebbe Dommisse - Страница 8

Refrigeration brought to South Africa

Combrinck remained determined to enter politics, but it would take another five years before he would make that happen and before David Graaff gained sole control of Combrinck & Co. in 1881.

Meanwhile, Graaff was busy with fundamental modernisation which would yield major dividends. In the 1880s he realised the population would grow rapidly and that modern methods of handling meat were required. It was crucial to mechanise the industry, to try out cold storage – a new invention – and to turn to mass production.

Gradual progress was made with refrigeration technology in a number of places around the world in the 19th century as an increasing number of experiments were made, some without success, to store meat and other food for longer periods for consumption. Salt, spices and chemicals were used and eventually crates with ice, but successful preservation remained a problem for many years. Various inventors experimented with different forms of cold storage, until it was found that ships with cooling chambers and trains with refrigerator carriages could transport meat between the four corners of the earth. In 1877/78 Ferdinand Carré successfully transported 150 tons of meat, kept at a temperature of 27–30 degrees Fahrenheit, on the French ship Paraguay from France to Buenos Aires and back. In Scotland, Henry Bell, John Bell and Joseph James Coleman designed the Bell-Coleman machine on the Circassia in 1879, and it carried a cargo of frozen meat from America to London. The same year the Strathleven, also fitted with a Bell-Coleman machine, departed from Melbourne with a freight of beef, mutton and butter, which arrived in London in a good condition after a voyage of nine weeks and 24 000 kilometres.1

These new developments were of great interest to Combrinck & Co., especially since Australia and New Zealand, with their huge herds, had started exporting mutton in the 1880s. David Graaff was sent abroad, to Europe, the continent and the United States, where he visited the large markets, abattoirs and meat-packing companies.2 In Chicago he gained valuable experience at the large meat-shipping company Armour, and he visited businesses in other American cities.

During his visit to Argentina, a country with huge herds of cattle and sheep, another species attracted Graaff’s attention: the Argentinian Arab horses, which made a major impression on him. He bought Arabs bred by H. Ayersa of Buenos Aires and brought them to Cape Town. He also imported Arabs from Syria, including a registered mare called Malaf.3 Initially, the stud horses were brought to Fernwood, an estate close to Kirstenbosch that he was renting.4 However, the damp climate there was not suited for such horses and, therefore, he bought the Tygerberg property De Grendel in the 1890s, where he had magnificent stables built and used the horses for riding and as carthorses.

Over time he also established his own stud of thoroughbred Friesland cows on the farm, which had been awarded to Booy Booysen in the early days of the Cape.5 The road from Cape Town ran past it because back then it was easier for ox-wagons to go across the Tygerberg than over the sandy plains of Bellville. The Graaff’s farm thus got its Dutch name as the grendel (or “bolt”) between Cape Town and Tygerberg.6

Graaff ran this farm on the slopes of Plattekloof as a gentleman’s estate for which he would become known all over the country. His stud cows and Arab horses would win top prizes at various agricultural exhibitions. In 1911, for example, three of De Grendel’s Arabs won their respective divisions at the Rosebank Fair in Cape Town. Their names were engraved on a silver tray still in the possession of the Graaff family: Sultan, the top stallion, Kalaf, the top mare and Zarina, the best filly.7

Graaff was not the only person with South African connections who understood the enormous advantages of cold storage. A Scotsman, Sir Donald Currie, owner of the shipping company the Castle Line and the man who donated the Currie Cup for South African rugby and cricket competitions, also recognised its possibilities. Besides, his daughter Bessie was married to a progressive fruit farmer, Percy Alport Molteno, son of the first premier of the Cape Colony. He wanted to export Cape fruit to Europe, a hope that was realised on 13 February 1889, when the freighter Grantully Castle sailed from Table Bay harbour with 15 tons of grapes in its cooling chambers. The experiment turned into a disaster, because the whole consignment had turned rotten upon arrival at Covent Garden in London. Much had yet to be learnt about the successful cold storage of fruit.8

Meat frozen rock-hard was a different matter, though; it did not need the same subtle treatment as deciduous fruit. By this time, Graaff was devising plans to import the machinery needed for refrigeration. After his return from his reconnaissance visit abroad he exchanged letters in January 1890 with the Pulsometer Engineering Company regarding the latest refrigeration systems, ammonia compressors and similar.9 Not long afterwards cooling chambers were installed on the premises of Combrinck & Co. and cold storage became firmly established in South Africa.10 As the pioneer of cold storage in South Africa, Graaff took the lead. His role in this regard was still recognised a few decades later, including in an official investigation by the Council of Trade and Industry, which noticed that a company of butchers had taken a leading role in the industry with the cold storage of meat: Combrinck & Co.11

Meanwhile, Combrinck’s participation in Combrinck & Co. gradually decreased until he was elected to the Cape Parliament in 1882, and David Graaff’s career also took a new course: he entered local politics.